


Between Two Hearts

by NohrianScum (OrderOfRevan)



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anankos Does Not Exist, Artistic License, Explicit Chapters Will be Labeled, F/M, Gratuitious Use of Jakob, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Revelation Alternate Path, Slow Burn, Two Blocks of Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:18:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrderOfRevan/pseuds/NohrianScum
Summary: Corrin flees to Izumo, a neutral land where she can hide from the siblings who feel she has betrayed them, only to find herself the subject of a prophecy that may mean the salvation of Nohr and Hoshido alike.In truth, the solution may be closer to home than she realizes.





	1. A Divergent Path

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone. 
> 
> First of all, allow me to thank you for giving this story a chance. I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Please keep in mind that I have taken significant artistic liberties in this story and that it's not canon compliant, but I've done my best to keep the heart of what made the characters so lovable in the first place intact. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

_Savage beating heart, trembling bloody red -_   
_What hurts the most is abandonment, a keen revelation._   
_Behold the barred soul! Still tender to touch._   
_The beast beneath the mortal flesh, your birthright_   
_Born in fire and blood, the pain of loss, the thrill of conquest,_   
_And still shuddering at the breath of betrayal, broken._

 

She was cold, the heavy ocean mist clinging to her skin and hair, the salt on the breeze stinging her eyes.

  
They’d passed the point where night melted into day some time ago, the stars hanging miles behind them, glinting off the impossibly dark expanse of sea like eyes in the depths. Though grateful they’d only had to sail on the night sea for a time, Corrin was still unused to the bright light of day and to the wide open spaces that existed beyond the walls of one of the only homes she could clearly remember. Two parts awed, one part afraid, she couldn’t help but go up onto deck every day just to experience the way the sky looked stretching from horizon to horizon with nothing to stop her from imagining what it might be like to sail off the edge of the world and into a new life.

A life where there had never been any choice to make, where he very existence wasn’t tainted by something no one could have foreseen in a place where there was no war to speak of. 

But it was impossible.

She had known it was impossible from the very first time she’d heard Ryoma give an impassioned speech about what ‘those monsters’ had done to her, about the ways in which they had ‘violated’ her autonomy and kept here as a ‘mere trophy’. Corrin had never bothered to explain to him that such a thing may have been King Garon’s intention from the start, but Nohr as a whole had treated her fairly well, that she had even found love there, found family. 

Well, he knew now, she supposed. 

“Lady Corrin?” The soft voice drew her from her thoughts, her eyes straying towards her manservant, though she supposed that was on a voluntary basis now that she couldn’t pay him. “You should be sleeping. What are you doing up on deck at this hour?”

“Waiting,” she said, offering up a smile as she gestured towards the horizon, the shape of a massive pagoda peering through the heavy evening mists, little more than a blue shadow against a white sky.   
He said nothing, nearly lost in the cloud around them, only his black eyes and violet ribbon standing out against the darkness, pale visage melding into the muffled world about them. For a moment, she watched him watch the looming shape of Izumo’s palace, the promise of a life beyond the threat of the headsman’s axe ever hanging over her, though it was far from the distant land of her fantasies. It was just another in a series of progressively larger prisons, places she could not leave without either permission or due to the fear of her own imminent demise. 

“So we are nearly there.” Jakob muttered, shrugging of the plainclothes jacket he wore and draping it over her shoulders as he came to stand directly at her side, clasping his hands behind his back, “sanctuary.”

Her smile faltered and she sighed, leaning out over the guard rail, the dark waters parting beneath the ship’s massive, wooden hull, wind caught in its yellowing white sails. She pulled the jacket more tightly around her body, closing her eyes to listen to the cries of distant water birds, a sure sign that land was getting close and that some of her worries might finally be laid to rest, though she sorely wished they could be resolved in a different way. 

Corrin’s throat tightened, the faces of her siblings swimming behind her eyes, hurt etched on each of their expressions as she turned away due to her own cowardice, unable to choose a side in this tragic war. She hadn’t been strong enough to sacrifice one or the other, and in the process she’d sacrificed them both and cast her entire life into chaos. 

“Yes,” she finally managed, swallowing past the lump that had formed in her throat, “we’re nearly there. I can only hope that the Archduke is as willing to parley with us as Azura seems to think he’ll be.”   
She turned her head towards Jakob, who nodded nearly imperceptibly, joining her to lean out over the railing, “I am sure he will be, milady. You are just as royal as Lady Azura, after all. There is no reason to think you will not be welcomed with open arms.”

Laughing, Corrin threw back her head, the sound bouncing out over the water, echoing over the wooden deck until it finally faded with a last eerie note of resonance, “I’m not a princess anymore, Jakob. You heard his royal pain, the High Prince of Hoshido, and Xander the Crown Prince of stubborn asses.” 

“Would that not collectively make them both a royal pain in the ass, Lady Corrin?” Jakob asked with a secretive smile, dark eyes trained on the ever-growing shape of the distant palace. 

“Probably,” she conceded, then paused. “Definitely.”

She heaved a sigh, tipping her head back to stare at the yawning vortex of white clouds that would not clear until the day came, bathing the world in the pure light of the sun that never shone west of the world’s backbone. Before her months in Hoshido, she could never recalled seeing the sun or the beautiful blue sky, only the indigo of the starry heavens and the bright moon, and then at night a void of black so vast that it felt as though it may swallow you whole. 

“It doesn’t make it hurt any less. I’ve never seen Xander look so betrayed in my entire life, and Ryoma…” she reached up to rub at her suddenly burning eyes. “He was so angry, Jakob. I still see them in my dreams, you know, looming over me like a wall of ice and an ocean of fire. If you and Azura hadn’t been there, I …”

“Lady Corrin,” Jakob’s voice drifted softly into her thoughts, accompanied by a warm hand, even through the leather gloves he wore, “you must not blame yourself. This situation is something I am certain no one would be capable of coping with, not even the most competent person in all the land.”

“I still lost them, Jakob,” she muttered, though she didn’t flinch away from his hand. “Takumi tried to kill me. Camilla was crying.”

“They are still alive.”

Corrin took a deep breath and nodded, though the words she spoke were bitter. “For how much longer, Jakob?”

He did not answer, going silent and leaving the sound of the creaking ship as her only conversation partner. 

It was just as well, she supposed. 

After all, this world was full of many harsh realities that she might not have even been able to fathom less than a cycle of the seasons ago. When Xander had explained to her that life was intrinsically unfair she hadn’t really believed him, though she had tried her hardest to grasp and internalize his lessons. 

There was no justice in this world, and at the end of the day you were alone in a cold world with nothing but the consequences of your actions, huddling about the heat of your convictions for warmth.

And right now? Her conviction that she had done the right thing had burned itself out, leaving nothing but embers drifting on the sea breeze. 

“It will turn out, Lady Corrin. I am certain of it,” Jakob said at long last, his hand on her back the only thing grounding her to that moment. “There must be a way to set things right again.”

She knew he didn’t believe it, not really, but appreciated his attempt at faith nonetheless.

Right now he was the last light in the storm, the single reliable safe-haven when she had lost all other support, just like Izumo was her last chance of possibly eking out something like a normal life.   
If she had to live like a fugitive, so be it. 

Corrin supposed that was the price she paid for her sentimentality. 

* * *

It reminded her of Shirasagi, a press of teeming bodies and their accompanying smells and sounds dancing about her, overwhelming in their intensity, especially after the quiet of the ocean. There was something about the sight of burly men unloading plain boxes, about women with painted faces selling food to passersby with a shout, that brought to mind the way the people of Hoshido has looked on that day.

The day, in hindsight, that her life had fallen apart. 

Dressed in a simple Hoshidan-style commoner’s garb, a shawl drawn up over her head, she passed through the crowd relatively unnoticed. She followed Azura, who walked with assurance through the tangle and press of people, practiced enough with city life and travel by ship that her knees hadn’t been rendered unstable by the return to solid land. Jakob supported her, his arm the stabilizing force she needed to put one foot in front of the other, each step easier than the last. 

The situation felt all too apt, Jakob helping her towards her destination while she used him like a cane, just like the elderly man who had instructed her in history, mathematics, and penmanship when she was but a child. She could still see Leo’s precocious face turning patient when he realized she was struggling, reaching out with tiny hands to help her hold the quill the proper way, showing her how to form the Nohrian characters with a scowl of concentration furrowing his fair brow. 

It was only now that she realized she must have been holding the quill like a calligraphy brush. She had a vague memory of Dynast Sumeragi smiling proudly at her as she showed her the delicate strokes and how to move her shoulder to turn the ink into the graceful lines and curves of the Hoshidan characters. How difficult it must have been for Leo to work with her to erase the knowledge a patient father had instilled in his daughter and replace it with fierce Nohrian efficiency, but he had managed. 

Trying to give herself something to look forward to, Corrin told herself that she could pick up the calligraphy again now that she had moved to Izumo. 

“It won’t be long now,” Azura assured her as they came to a stop, the woman’s pale yellow eyes darting down a wide, cobbled street, looking both ways before she reached out to grab Corrin’s hand. “I am certain the Archduke will agree to see us once he learns of your particular situation.”

She tugged Corrin forward, pulling her away from Jakob and leading her towards the right. Corrin stumbled along after Azura, her eyes widening as they emerged onto a wide main street, well-kept and colorful, swaths of bright fabric sheltering the tables of countless merchants. People milled about, preforming their day to day tasks and barely paying the three strangers any mind, all in the shadow of the massive palace pagoda, back lit by the bright morning sun. 

“Welcome to Izumo,” Azura said with a smile, dropping Corrin’s hand. 

So close to her, Corrin could see the the few strands of pale blue hair that had come loose from the long braid she wore underneath her shawl, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Briefly, their eyes met and Azura’s smile widened, yellow eyes reflecting a sense of peace Corrin had not witnessed in her since before the incident in Shirasagi, before her entire life had been uprooted and everything she had ever known had been violently taken from her. 

They were so similar, she and Azura, sometimes it felt odd to think about. 

“Thank you,” Corrin muttered, taking her first steps down the long road and finding herself uncertain of what to do next now that she was here. “I don’t know what we could have made it this far without you, Azura.”

Azura just smiled and opened her mouth to respond, interrupted by the sound of music and the soft mutter that mounted to a sound like a river rushing before it silenced itself, leaving only the sounds of drums and an instrument she had heard only in her faintest of memories. Eyes trained on the end of the long main street, Corrin watched as a procession swelled from the castle, her eyes wideningas she realized that the men and women in pale, unusual robes were carrying a man with sun-spun hair in a litter between them.

A man who could surely only be the Archduke Izana. 

Corrin stood frozen, startled out of her gawking when Jakob pulled her back towards the side of the road, standing protectively behind her. 

The music grew louder with every step the procession took towards them until she could feel it humming through her body, her heartbeat seeming to synchronize with the drums. Oddly, she felt calm, even when the liter stopped directly in front of her and the Archduke stepped down from it, his serene expression transforming into a wide smile, prismatic eyes peering down at her from underneath his long lashes. 

With a flash of realization, it dawned on Corrin that this man must also be the descendant of a Dragon, or at the very least drew his power from one. Something inside of her hummed in his presence, reminding her of unyielding black scales and burning red eyes, of the power that coursed just beneath the surface of her skin, kept in check by the dragonstone hanging about her neck. Reaching up, she brushed the blue-green gemstone with her fingertips, earning herself a wide smile from Archduke Izana. 

“Welcome, Princess of Nohr,” he said, loudly enough that his voice reverberated across the now-silent street. “I would offer you refreshment, but alas, I didn’t bring any with me! You’ll have to wait until I show you and your companions to your new apartment on the palace grounds, I suppose.” 

“Archduke—” she started, but he waved her off, wrapping an arm around her shoulder to herd her towards the large liter. 

“Not now, Princess. Now come along, we have so much to discuss and I want to do it while I’m not wearing these horribly uncomfortable sandals,” he glanced over his shoulder, motioning with his free hand for Jakob and Azura to follow. “Come, all three of you. The Princess can hardly go anywhere without her stalwart companions. This is always how the stories go you know, those heroic tales. You’re absolutely essential, I assure you.” 

The look on Jakob’s face would have been amusing in any other situation, darkly confused, but as it was Corrin’s own mental state was not much different. It was all she could do just to stop herself from protesting further, allowing herself to be drawn onto the liter by the Archduke and spirited away towards the palace to the tune of the drummers and the flutists, watching the once so distant building grow and grow until she was dwarfed by it s massive shape and then entering through its gates. 

Looking behind her, she could see the waves sparkling in the sunlight looking significantly more cheerful than she had felt while riding them only that morning. It seemed that part of her life was far behind of her, the strange, dark, turbulent world of politics and war that she had been born into, soon to be replaced by life in a palace, powerless to ever return and change anything or help those she had left. 

She would remain here in exile while war consumed them all.

As she looked forward into the beautiful courtyard, Corrin saw only Shirasagi aflame and the empty halls of Windmire Palace, Garon’s laughter the only sound as the faces of his children grew cold in death’s embrace.

* * *

The room smelled sweetly of incense, the scent a heady one, turning her mind into a drowsy fog when coupled with her fatigue. 

In front of her Archduke Izana sat, a wide smile on his lips as he pressed the rim of an ornate ceramic teacup to his lips. He leaned towards her with a mischievous look in his eyes, as if they were very old friends rather than two strangers who had met only mere hours ago. 

He had almost immediately demanded this meeting, giving her time to go to her new apartment on the Palace Grounds to freshen up and change into the finer clothing he had provided them with. It devolved into a lecture by Azura, who showed Jakob how to tie the sash about the waist, an art form Sakura had once instructed Corrin in when she was but a stranger in Hoshido with these people who claimed to be the siblings she had lost during a malicious kidnapping. Of course, her stalwart butler learned the task much more quickly than she had, and in no time at all he was escorting she and

Azura to have tea with the Archduke just like he’d escorted her to every tea she’d ever had with Elise or Camilla. 

Now he examined the tea he’d been served with a critical eye, a look not so different from the one in the depths of the Archduke’s eyes, though he smiled disarmingly. 

“You have come a very long way to be here, Princess,” he said conversationally as he placed the cup in front of him, folding his hands politely in his lap. “Flown in on the ocean wind like a little bird, in fact.” 

Corrin grasped her own cup in her hands, taking comfort in the heat though she felt little desire to partake of the drink. Her stomach turned and twisted with anxiety, and even if the tea might calm that she really couldn’t bring herself to raise the cup to her lips, no matter how poorly the action might reflect on her in the eyes of her host. 

“I’ve been disowned, Archduke,” she said. “Which is why I’m here, to ask for —”

He held up a hand and she choked back a sigh of frustration, setting her jaw and staring at him, waiting patiently for him to finish speaking his peace. Again, she felt foolish and out of place east of the Spine where the rules of engagement were completely different and she had no real way of knowing what was considered impolite, still recalling the look of shock on Takumi’s face when she’d tried to pour tea for herself. 

“You are still a Princess,” he asserted with a small laugh, shaking his mane of pale hair slowly from side to side, “I would be hard pressed to make you less of a royal if I were to drain the blood out of you myself, child.” In spite of the severity of his words themselves, his tone was jovial, even relaxed, “ And if you’re worried about having a place to go, don’t. I’m putting all of you up until the cogs of fate start to spin properly and the machine of your destiny groans to life.” 

He turned his head towards Azura, his wide smile softening ever so slightly, “Or am I wrong?”

Azura shook her head, “I suspected you might be able to help. Your divination ability is known far and wide in Hoshido for its accuracy. Queen Mikoto herself trusted you as a confidant.”

“Indeed she did,” he leaned ever further forward, his odd eyes peering at Corrin. “Do you know, Princess? Yours is the will which controls the tides of fate. Your heart beats the rhythm that all the dancers sway to, and your hand sets the shogi board and determines the outcome.”

Corrin swallowed hard, though Archduke Izana did not pull away.

Instead, he reached out to take one of her nervous, shaking hands, placing it palm up. For a moment she was completely frozen underneath his touch, barely daring to breathe and rendered unable to pull away, all thoughts of escape completely shattered the moment he placed his own hand over hers and his skin began to glow. 

“You choose this path out of love,” he said, his voice whispering around her, the candles on the table between them flickering with the power in his voice, “and so out of love the resolution will be born. It is your tender affection that will sway a heart of stone and give succor to a broken soul, and in doing so the pieces that are shattered will be made whole, warring states reconciled by bonds of love… And blood.”

The glow faded and he pulled away, a soft smile still on his lips, Corrin trembling no less in the wake of his simple prophecy than she had out of fear before he had even voiced the words. Love? Blood? She was meant to end a war in such a stupid way? Xander and Ryoma had already both proved they weren’t going to listen to anything she said, Takumi already hated her, and the others probably felt so betrayed they wouldn’t even look her in the eye if she approached them. 

The only ones who might be willing to listen were Elise and Sakura. 

Still, when she glanced at Azura, her face soft and full of gentle determination, something stirred inside of Corrin’s chest, something that she could not quite explain. 

It made he remember the look on Queen Mikoto’s face the morning of the day she died, quietly sad and reserved but full of the kind of belief that could only come from absolute certainty. The thought made her wonder if maybe Azura shared Mikoto’s gift for divination, a gift that Archduke Izana shared, a keen insight that granted the ability to peer into the cosmic pool of power and discern the most likely of all possible futures. 

The thought was both comforting and unsettling at the same time. 

In truth, the certainty would be nice to have in a world that had been turned upside down. She was used to schedules, to regimentation, to getting up as early as her staff could force her to eat, bathe, study, train, read, eat, train…. Day after day after day in the same locations with multiple variations of the same interactions every day. How was Gunter? Well enough, he supposed. Oh, Lady Corrin, I polished your armor! Felicia, please don’t worry about the teacups, I can ask Xander to order more…

To have that again would be a relief, it would make the future she worried about, a future where she would have to live in this place without any real connections or an idea of what to do with herself, that much more easy to accept. 

But to know that she was so significant, that it was likely her dragon blood that made it so?

The thought made her feel nauseous, especially when she still remembered what it felt like to have her bones and muscles contort, for soft flesh to turn into hard, black scales… And to be irrevocably changed when it was over, black hair bleached into a soft pink, formerly Nohrian Violet eyes burning red, with sharp teeth and pointed ears? It made her feel as if her entire existence was a sham, that nothing good could ever come from associating with her, even if she knew that a great many people admired her and relied on her for kindness and a sense of purpose. 

She hadn’t asked for any of this.

She had only wanted to be free. 

And now here she was, not even certain what to do with that freedom, should it really exist at all. 

“I think… I need to rest,” Corrin muttered at last, standing up only for Jakob to follow her, immediately at her side. 

“Sleep well, Princess,” the Archduke said, pressing his teacup to his lips once more, continuing his farewell once he set it down. “May your dreams be as productive as this meeting was and as glorious as my hair.”

She thanked him, but in truth?

Corrin hoped she didn’t dream at all.


	2. The Violet Eyed Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are multiple points of view in this story. We'll be back to Corrin in chapter four!
> 
> Until then, enjoy some Ryoma. 
> 
> I could hardly deprive myself of the joy of writing his character arc, after all.

_Bang, flash, searing light_   
_Scars in flesh , the surface cracks_   
_Truth flows from fissures._

He would not lose his composure. 

It was the mantra he repeated to himself as he stared down into Takumi’s flushed, chin raised, dark eyes spitting venom. Beside him Hinoka stood, far more reticent but equally as defiant, her expression one that would normally make him laugh and clasp her shoulder fondly.

This, however, was no laughing matter. 

“For the final time,” Ryoma said, managing to maintain his composure only through years of careful training, “someone must return to Shirasagi to ensure the security of the capitol. We are no longer in a position where we can all be out and about. The people need to see that we support them.” 

“And you’re the Dynast,” Takumi hissed emphatically. “Shouldn’t it be you who goes back to Shirasagi and reassures the people?”

“I am the High Prince,” he said, more tersely than he had intended if the way Hinoka flinched was any indication. 

Sighing, he tugged his fingers through the unrestrained and wild locks of his hair, sitting down on the chest that contained his armor. Already, he could feel fatigue besetting him, though he could hardly afford it right now on the eve of war, camped so closely to the Nohrian forces at the roots of the Spine. If he were not ever vigilant they could be overcome at any moment in an act of bloody ‘vengeance’ for the ‘corruption’ of their precious Princess Corrin, another empty justification for their savagery. 

“And as High Prince,” Ryoma continued, determined not to reveal how tumultuous his thoughts had grown to his siblings, “it is my job to be on the front line until such a time as I a ascend the throne. Regardless,” he said through his teeth, shooting Hinoka a silencing look as she opened her mouth to protest. “Regardless, it is my duty and right as your elder brother to instruct you in what is suitable, and what is suitable is for you to return to Shirasagi.” 

There was another quiet moment, but then Takumi stepped forward, his expression quieter that it had been moments before. The storm has passed, replaced with nothing short of absolute certainty as he stared Ryoma straight in the eyes and spoke, “No.”

Leaning back, Ryoma lounged about, arching a single brow at his bold younger brother, “Pardon?”

“I said no. You don’t know what’s best for me, Ryoma,” Takumi said the words in a rush, clearly intimidated, though he pushed forward in spite of all that. “I’m not a child any longer. I’ve come of age and I’ve trained more than enough to fight in this war. I’m honor bound as a Prince of Hoshido and …” he dropped his head, hesitating, his fists balled tightly at his side. “And as your brother. It’s my duty to protect the people as much as it’s yours.” 

They locked eyes, the orange in the depths of Takumi’s gaze smoldering quietly, and for a moment they remained that way, simply staring at one another. Hinoka and Sakura watched on but didn’t dare interfere, knowing full well that it might make things worse after years of watching the brothers at one another’s throats - and backs - just as brothers should be. 

Slowly Ryoma rose, his expression hard, though it slowly softened and he reached out to ruffle his younger brother’s hair affectionately. “Fine. You’ve made your point. Go pitch your tent.” 

Takumi didn’t even seem certain how to respond, at first, as if he hadn’t actually been expecting that to work. The thought made Ryoma a bit ashamed, made him wonder if maybe he had been too hard on his younger brother all this time, hadn’t expressed enough how proud he was of Takumi’s progress and in what high esteem he held his swiftness of mind and body. He was sullen, but he’d changed so much from the shy little boy Ryoma had known as a child long before Kamui - Corrin, he reminded himself yet again - had been taken from them, body, mind, and spirit. 

But there would be time to correct that later, Ryoma told himself. 

They would all make it out of this alive and intact, and after the war was over he would make the effort for not being able to be their father. 

For failing to live up to the example Sumeragi had set. 

“Okay. Yeah. Okay!” Takumi smiled in spite of himself, clearing his throat and quickly spinning to hide the flush of excitement that Ryoma had seen bloom on his cheeks. “Uh. Send me a message when you need to reach me. I’m going to go inform Hinata and Oboro of our new orders.” 

Ryoma watched him go, ignoring the feeling of Hinoka’s angry stare at the back of his head until Takumi was far enough away to no longer overhear them. Then, he slowly turned his attention back towards her, looking up at her from his seat on the wooden chest, “I still need you in Shirasagi.”

“I’ve trained my entire life for this, Ryoma,” she objected, the fire just beneath the surface of her calm tone unmistakable. “I’m every bit the warrior Takumi is.”

“You also know the domestic sphere better than he does,” Ryoma pointed out, “and it is preciously because you have experience with military command that I need you, specifically, to oversee things while I’m here. If something should happen to me… If Shirasagi should be besieged…” 

Ryoma stood, walking over towards his younger sister, gently cupping her face and watching as her eyes grew wide, welling with tears he knew she wouldn’t shed. Gone was the sensitive, feminine little flower he’d known as a child, wilted and replaced with the calloused hands that reached up to cover his own and the plain, unadorned face that she bowed as she leaned into his touch. Hinoka had wilted to save Corrin, only to have that tender faith trampled on, and though he would never admit it to her in particular, he was saying these things in part to give her training new purpose so that she did not dwell too long on that betrayal. 

“Don’t talk like that, Ryoma,” Hinoka muttered, her voice rough with emotion, “nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Of course not,” he said with a small laugh, his chest rumbling as he leaned forward and pressed an affectionate kiss to her hairline, “but if something were to happen, if the worse were to occur, it’s your strength that will lead our people. I’m not doing this to exile you, Hinoka, I’m doing it because you’re the best woman for the job.” 

She raised her head towards him again, exhaled shakily, and then nodded before she pulled away, “I can do it.”

Ryoma only smiled. 

Returning it, Hinoka looked towards the tent flaps, where Sakura still stood, pale faced and silent. She hadn’t bothered arguing with him this entire time, but there was still something in her expression that set him on blade’s edge, a feeling that warned him there was something on her mind, something she dearly needed to express. 

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” Hinoka said at last, reaching out to press her hand against the heavy fabric, glancing back over her shoulder one last time before exiting. “Dawn Dragon watch over you, brother, and may she guide your steps.”

“May she guide your steps,” he said with a bow of his head.

And then she was gone. 

The silence did not last for long. 

“D-do you truly think Corrin wanted to hurt us?” Sakura stuttered, though there was a force behind her voice that gave him pause, a deep conviction that she did not typically posses. 

Ryoma opened his mouth to respond, looking down into her young face, wanting to explain to her that not choosing a side was like condemning their people to death, but Sakura did not give him a chance to speak. Instead, she took a step forward, her small hands balled into fists at her sides, eyes brimming with tears as she stared up at him with trembling lip, a show of truly heroic strength for someone who had a difficult time bringing herself to meet the eyes of a stranger. 

“C-Corrin didn’t want us to fight! She tried to stop us, Ryoma, and you threw h-her away! Family doesn’t do that!” The tears that welled in her eyes spilled over and he reached out to brush them away, but she batted at his hand and quickly took a step back. “We should have protected her! B-but that doesn’t matter in the face of Hoshidan pride, does it? S-some things are more important than the war.”

“Sakura—” he tried to say, only for her to shake her head and speak over him, something she only did in private, and even then only when she was furious. 

“No. I-I…” She reached up, rubbing at her eyes. “I just got her back, Ryoma, but you drove her away and now I might never see her again. M-mother wouldn’t have wanted this, to see us fighting.” 

Without a word, she turned and walked from the room, head bowed, wrapping her arms around her torso as if to hold herself together. She left him no time to contemplate going after her, no time to do anything other than reach out to stop her, his hand falling useless to his side, hair swaying in the breeze she’d left in her wake, smelling faintly of her perfume. 

Slowly, Ryoma sank back to the trunk and craddled his head in both of his hands, staring at the well-trampled dirt.

* * *

 

It was bright and beautiful in the field, peaceful, the tall grasses waving in a gentle breeze that ruffled his hair. 

He wore no armor, the Raijinto far from his side, though it felt right to not be wearing it in the moment. There was no need for weapons in a place like this, no need for stress and violence as he walked the grassy hills at an idle pace, pausing only to sun himself on a rock. This was the world at its best, a place where he could leave all his worries behind him, where there was nothing but the all-encompassing warmth of the light and the sound of the wind, like the caress of his mother’s fingers through his hair. 

“You worry entirely too much, my dear son,” muttered a soft voice, prompting his eyes to flicker open to gaze up into the face of serene Queen Mikoto. “The weight you bear is much more than that any man of your years should have to carry. You are still so young…”

“This is a dream,” Ryoma whispered, his head quite suddenly in her lap, watching her smile down at him, the grey in her dark hair bringing out the warm depths of her eyes, “I saw you die.”

“You saw them destroy my body,” she told him, laughing ever so slightly, “the soul is not such a fragile thing, my son.” 

It was a dream, surely, Ryoma thought, but it was a good one, one he wished to indulge. 

So he closed his eyes, breathing in softly, basking in the feeling of her fingers raking through his hair the way they had so many times while he was much younger. Corrin had been taken from them well over a decade ago, and then there had been years together before that, years where he was not a man but a child desperately in need of a gentle touch and soft smile, a boy in need of maternal love and guidance. 

For awhile, he could pretend they had never lost her. 

“I’m glad to see you. It’s been difficult without you. I’m not the family’s rock, just their keeper,” he told her, the words spilling out of him. “You held them together, mother, just as you held Hoshido together. There is no way I can follow you or father and be half the ruler you were.” 

“You try to be too much like your father rather than allowing yourself to be Ryoma,” Mikoto told him, fingers pausing, hands resting delicately on the sides of his head. “You must know that you are not Sumeragi and that you share much in common with your birth mother, in that regard.” 

She sighed sadly and he opened his eyes, looking up into her face to find him staring down at him, her eyes gentle but full of a deep sorrow, “do you truly think the people of Hoshido need another warrior king? Or do they require someone else? Someone with humor,” she said, reaching out to touch the center of his forehead,” and a good head on his shoulders and a kind heart?” 

“Father was a good man,” Ryoma objected, sitting up and pulling away, his brow furrowing deeply, “and right now the people need me to fight for them, to accept my sacred duty as the chosen of Raijinto and take up arms against the enemies of Hoshido.” Reaching up, he ran a hand through the tangled masses of his long, thick, hair, “right now, Hoshido needs father, not me. If it ever needed me.” 

He watched her frown, the lines of her face creasing as she reached out and took his hands, pulling him slowly to his feet. Queen Mikoto stared up at him, her hands warm, her face full of all the gentle love and affection that he would never feel again now that she was gone. The emotion was enough to make his throat constrict, and he bowed his head, feeling nothing but shame in her presence  -

Shame that he couldn’t save her, just like he couldn’t save Father.

Just like he couldn’t save Corrin. 

“The time of Garon and Sumeragi needs to come to an end,” she said, squeezing his hands gently. “You shouldn’t be afraid of the man you are, Ryoma. Reach out to Prince Xander. He is a good man, like you, and if he’s on the throne Nohr can begin to heal. You must forge bonds of trust, Ryoma, not engender more hatred.”

Ryoma pulled away, shaking his head, “how can I possibly reach out to him? He’s part of the problem, Mother. He tried to take Corrin from us.”

“He loves Corrin, too,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. “In fact, your love for Corrin is one of the many things you have in common.”

He shook his head, swallowing heavily and turned his head to object only to find that the world around him was changing. The field melted away, shop fronts growing from the ground, Ryoma stumbling backwards as the statue of the Dawn Dragon sprouted from where he stood moments before, his sandaled feet slipping on cobblestone. 

Eyes going wide, he snapped his attention back towards Mikoto, who stood perfectly still with a sad smile on her face just as she had that day less than a week ago. From the crowd of faceless men and women, Ryoma could see one of the citizens approach her, his eyes blank in a way that sent a chill down his spine. There was nothing there, no spark of intelligence, just the emptiness of death, the glazed over expression of a corpse, made all the more disturbing by its movement. 

“Mother—” Ryoma began, but Mikoto only shook her head. 

“You couldn’t have done anything, Ryoma. I knew this would happen,” she said, looking up towards the very top of Shirasagi palace where the sun hung high in the sky. “You have to let me go, let your father go, and move on.”

“I… I can’t… The people…” Ryoma stumbled towards her, pleading, wanting her to understand, praying he could do something to change this at least in his dreams. 

“The people need the man who survived,” she insisted, cutting him off.

Queen Mikoto screamed. 

He would never forget that scream, the sound of her voice as the dagger the faceless monster was holding pushed into her and she crumpled to the ground. The sound ripped through him, shattering his composure as he ran towards her, only to find himself standing in front of Corrin’s ghostly figure as she cradled their dying mother in her arms. 

Pain was etched into Queen Mikoto’s face, mingling with peace as she reached out to touch Corrin’s cheek one last time.

And then Corrin let out a wail, a wail that transformed into a roar that knocked Ryoma from his feet. All around him, he could hear shouts of terror, smell burning flesh, feel the heat on the back of his neck even though the hairs on his arms stood on end. Above him, she towered, the dragon, her long tail lashing the ground, black and indigo scales reflecting the light of the fire and turning her very appearance savage.

A wicked dragon, like the Dusk Dragon.

A being of perfect night and absolute terror. 

Slowly, she turned to him, opening her maw to show her teeth, and then —

Then he woke up in a sweat, his entire body trembling with fear. Behind his eyes he could feel a burning, his throat growing tight even as his vision cleared and he could see that he was still sitting in his tent, preparing for a war that may destroy everything he held dear. For a moment, he could not nothing but sit, trying to regain his bearings and find the will to move again, even working against the swirling images of death and chaos in his mind. 

After a moment he stood, reaching out for Raijinto, never far away, determined to vent his frustrations into physical activity rather than spend his time contemplating the futility that was a future where Nohr and Hoshido were at peace.

* * *

 

By the time they were actually on the road away from the Spine it was early morning and the mist was just beginning to clear. 

Ryoma walked among the rank and file, conversation fluttering in snatches around him to occupy the hours on their long march back towards Fort Jinya and the capitol. He was expecting intelligence reports soon, and it would do them little good to receive them so close to the bulk of the Nohrian force that had surely been patiently waiting just beyond the barrier when it fell. There was no way he would risk whatever information he could glean from the vast network of ninja that served the royal family falling into Nohrian hands. 

“How long do you think they’ve been planning this, Brother?” 

Ryoma glanced down towards Takumi, walking next to him and wearing a quiet, contemplative expression. This was the side of Takumi that Ryoma enjoyed seeing, the kind that was willing to delve into long discussions and indulge the part of himself that was careful and analytical. Takumi was endlessly competitive and had been since they were both small, but when he became comfortable enough to make assertions and then ask questions? 

The man he would be in ten years really shone through, his potential as apparent as the sun now burning away the last of the night time mists. 

“King Garon is conniving,” he replied, “and his retainers and advisers doubly so. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d taken Corrin all those years ago just to send her back to us now and get his damn soulless minions into the city.” 

“So, what? She was just a tool? She was never coming home?” Takumi’s voice shook, betraying his anger. “Do you think she knew? That she—”

“No,” he said more tersely than he intended, thinking about Sakura’s words and her face in the dream last night. “She didn’t know.”

The conversation lapsed into silence after that, though Ryoma doubted that it would last. He knew Takumi too well to think that he would drop it for very long, but was content to let his mind wander while he waited; after all, there was much to be considered in the coming months. They were waging a war that would shape the entire course of history and Ryoma could scarcely allow Nohr to be at the wheel of that destiny. 

Imagining a future carved by the tyrants who conquered others with little reason, who drove people to do horrible things in the name of nationalism? It was a world where every man, woman, and child would be forced into subjugation, where no music would be heard save for that which Garon and his litany of wicked children approved.

Children who he imagined Garon had ordered to brainwash Corrin. 

It was easy to picture it, after everything that the Nohrians had taken from Hoshido. For years before things had escalated into violence it had been nothing but a never ending competition over resources, as his father had once told him. Everywhere Hoshido had tried to make alliances and trade agreements the Nohrians would send diplomats as well, diplomats who promised a wealth of precious metals and resources, who smiled smoothly and spoke with the absolute authority of a merchant. They were aggressive, throwing their weight and power around and acting without any honor or respect for those around them, and their nature reflected their King or Queen, as did the nature of all of the great courts of the realm. 

Garon had not been so zealous to dominate that he had conquered countries back then , but the moment that he had murdered Dynast Sumeragi, who had come to Cheve in good-faith, all of that had changed. 

“Even if she didn’t know, that doesn’t mean she had leeway to side against Hoshido,” Takumi said at last. “Doesn’t she see that Nohr corrupts everything it touches? That if they get their hands on our land they’ll hurt everyone? How could she….” He watched his brother take a deep breath, gaining control of himself slowly. “We’re her family, Ryoma. How could she turn on us that way?”

For a single moment a memory of that day on the battlefield flashed in Ryoma’s mind, of the cavalier who had managed to go toe to toe with him in combat whipping off his helmet to reveal a tangle of sweaty, blonde hair and eyes that had burned with cold fury and confidence. He could clearly recall how he’d tossed aside the simple iron blade he’d retrieved from the corpse of one of the men Ryoma had felled and reached for the sword at his side, revealing metal as black as sin with a halo that glowed the same hue of violet as the man’s eyes. 

And it was then that he had realized he had finally been granted the chance to meet the Crown Prince of Nohr. 

That man had raised Corrin in her tower prison, and she had run to him with open arms the moment she’d seen his face, practically throwing herself against the ebony suit of armor in her excitement and joy. It had hurt Ryoma to see that, and even now he would admit at a certain amount of resentment for being denied that response during her homecoming, a response that he and has family - their precious Mother - had been robbed of by the Nohrians that had certainly somehow repressed or erased her memories. 

Harder to swallow was the jealousy, the look on the man’s face as he’d wrapped his younger sister in his arms for a single moment before pushing her behind him to stand between them protectively, as if Ryoma himself would do something to harm her. It should have been him, Takumi, Hinoka… Anyone other than the Nohrian Scum. 

“Take that feeling to the battlefield, Takumi,” Ryoma finally advised, not really sure what else to say, not certain he could even give good advice on this subject when it hit him so close to the heart. “Take it, and use it to kill every Nohrian who stands in your way. The sooner we end this war, the sooner we can go retrieve Corrin and have her sit on the throne. Whatever they did to her, Takumi, that will fix it.” 

“I hope you’re right,” Takumi muttered, then let out a long groan. “I’m going to go talk to Hinata. Thanks for answering my questions, Brother, but at this point I just want to distract myself with something more interesting than whining about things we can’t change.”

Ryoma hummed, and then laughed slightly, “you just think you’re too cool to spend time with me anymore. I remember when you were still in your swaddling clothes —”

“Ugh! Shut up!” Takumi growled, his ears turning pink as he dashed away, Ryoma’s laughter following him. 

He shook his head in amusement, his eyes catching something black glinting on a hilltop on the second pass, freezing as the vague shape became clearer. 

There, atop a massive grey war horse, was the cavalier, Crown Prince Xander of Nohr, his face somehow even more pale than Ryoma remembered it being, making him look positively washed out in his black armor. Glued in place, he watched the man, who sat astride his horse amidst a small grove of trees, the look on his face one of fear and concern, though his expression went completely blank the moment he looked up and met Ryoma’s eyes. 

For a moment suspended in time they stared at one another, the words from Ryoma’s dream about the essence of the man’s character flashing through his mind, hand reaching towards Raijinto’s hilt…  
But Prince Xander turned only a second later, shattering the spell as he urged his mount off at a gallop, quickly disappearing into the distance. 

Though Ryoma was not sure why, he could not erase the emotion the man had worn on his face from his mind for the rest of the day


	3. Eyes in the Mist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we reveal the third point of view character, and find that no one is actually surprised that it's Xander.

_Sweet, slow whispering in the coming dark._   
_The parting of lips and the fluttering of eyes._   
_Take faith and still your yearning heart_

It was a warm night, though he knew that it was likely raining and dreary just beyond the Spine, a thought that brought him little comfort as he tossed and turned in his bedroll. Everything was oppressively hot and he found that he could not drift off no matter how much he practiced his breathing, struggling to free himself of the fabric surrounding him, relief washing over him when he could finally feel the cool night air seep through the thin fabric of his shirt. 

Shivering ever so slightly, Xander exhaled, reaching out to press his hand idly against the magic-powered glow stone and casting the fabric walls of his tent in familiar blue-green light. Slowly, he pushed himself into a stand position, his bare feet padding against the rugs that had been laid on the ground, worn and dusty old things that had likely serviced generations of soldiers before him and would be used by others after he had departed this place.This camp would be a somewhat permanent fixture, after all, even if he himself was destined to move on to other parts of the front.

Reaching up he briefly pulled his fingers through the loose strands of his hair, pushing it from his eyes as he let out a slow breath. Outside he could see that it was still bright out, even through the thick cloth walls of the tent and in spite of himself, he longed for the dark and misty plains of Nohr stretching endlessly before the Forest of the Forlorn on the road to Windmire. It was difficult to sleep, even the muffled fog of what passed for night here doing little to alleviate the constant sense that his flanks were exposed and vulnerable in the open. 

There were other things that plagued him, however, more pressing things. 

Family matters. 

Sinking down into his seat before the war table, Xander idly picked up one of the unused pieces, examining its worn pewter surface, running his thumbs over the eroded features of the miniature cavalier. He smiled, thinking about rainy days spent cooped up in the Northern Fortress passing the time playing chess, Felicia bustling about while Jakob hissed silent admonitions at her, ones that Corrin graciously ignored. He remembered her smile every time he would enter a room, the way she’d shown off every outfit Camilla had put her in, how she delighted in being a princess and warrior.

She was as gleeful to see a new sword as she was to run her fingers over the patterned surface of the finest lace and would have amazed the court with her presence, had she ever been given the chance. 

And now she never would be. 

Carefully, he set the piece back down, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest. 

Everything felt wrong, and just the thought of what he may have to do to Corrin if he saw her again made him feel sick. 

His stomach churned at the thought of her expression, the way her wild hair clung to her tear-stained face as she grasped a golden blade he had never seen before in her pale hands. 

He hadn’t wanted this. 

This was the last thing Xander had ever wanted, but allowing her to escape was better than dragging her back to Nohr in chains only for Father to order her execution. Watching her go, praying to the Great Dusk Dragon that he would never see her again, knowing that he must kill her if he did, destroyed him. 

For months upon end he had blamed himself for her disappearance, extended every resource just to find her, and then she pulled away from him at the last moment to avoid hurting a family he was certain she barely remembered. A family that he could not blame her for not wanting to harm, nonetheless, even if he was man enough to admit to himself that it hurt that she had not chosen them over the Hoshidans. 

It did not mean he wanted to see her suffer, and yet in refusing to take a side she had turned against Nohr and Father would demand her death. Betraying Nohr, refusing to grant them support, was as good as supporting Hoshido in the eyes of a man who Xander highly doubted saw anything in a rational way any longer. No more were there shades of complex motivation, feelings and thoughts that varied in intensity and frequency, but those against the throne and those for it. 

And woe to those against it, for they would face death.

Even the throne’s own children would not be spared. 

There had to be a way, he told himself, staring at the map on the table, wondering how many years of travel it had taken its artist to commit every feature to paper. He could compare it to himself, working for years to try to map his own father’s reactions, as if he were greeting a stranger, trying to understand this change so that he could fix it and bring their father back. So Elise could know the man he had when he was a mere child rather than the scorn of a parent who wanted her only for her talent in healing and so that he could see Corrin returned to Nohr where she belonged, safe and sound.

Not a day went by that he did not plead to the heavens for the strength to go on, for a miracle to happen, for the frozen depths of his father’s eyes to thaw.   
He missed his father. 

He was beginning to think he would never see him again. 

But his heart would not allow him to give up.

Not yet. 

A rustle by the tent flaps drew Xander’s attention, his eyes snapping upward, narrowing into slits. Silently, he crept back towards his bedroll, leaning down to grasp the hilt of his blade in hand, mind reeling with thoughts of Hoshidan ninja like the ones who had taken Thorton and Helena from him. This time, he would be strong enough to defend everyone in camp, if need be. 

He would not let another person die for him. 

Never again. 

The sudden sound of sibling squabbling, however, put him at ease. 

They were familiar voices, voices that pulled a fond but exasperated sigh from between his parted lips. Striding forward, he pulled the fabric aside, staring down into the shocked faces of his two youngest siblings, though they both quickly recovered. 

“Are you going to stand outside of my tent bickering all night, or are you going to do what you came here for?” Xander asked, watching Leo’s face turn pink, his mouth opening and closing slowly in a struggle for a retort as Elise pushed past him, smile already blooming on her lips. 

“Xander!” Elise said loudly, bounding towards him and wrapping her arms tightly around his center. 

Carefully, he reached out and placed a hand on top of her head, looking down into her face to find her pouting openly up at him. He suspected he knew what she was going to say, and a single glance toward stern and sullen Leo confirmed his suspicions, drawing a sigh from between his lips as he took her by the shoulders, pushing her firmly away from him. 

“Elise —”

“Xander, you can’t kill her!” 

“Elise —” he tried again. 

“She would never hurt us, Xander! Corrin loves us more than anything! I don’t care if she’s not really my sister by blood, Xander!” She pleaded with him, her tone breaking his heart, though he knew he must remain firm for her sake, especially. “So you just can’t kill her! You can’t!”

“Elise,” he said, this time more softly, watching the way her eyes brimmed with tears, reaching out to gently cup her face with both of his hands, “I am going to speak to her when I encounter her next. If she returns to Nohr, we can convince Father to forgive her…. Together. I promise you I have no more desire to see her suffer than you do.” 

He felt the relief wash over her, her tense, defiant expression vanishing as she embraced him once more. Quietly, Xander simply held her as he had since she was nothing more than a screaming, red faced infant whose mother wanted nothing to do with her, as he would continue to hold her until they were both old and grey. It was not long before her tears soaked his nightshirt, though he paid it no mind, quietly stroking the top of her head until at last she pulled away, red-eyed but smiling broadly. 

“I know I could trust you,” she said, rubbing at her face before smoothing the front of her rumpled skirt.

“Of course, Elise. Corrin is my sister, as well. I would never give up on my family. Now…” Xander crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a long look, “I suggest you try to get some rest. I know it hardly feels like the sort of place you can sleep, but we’ll all be up and about in a matter of hours. I need you to be your usual bright-eyed self.”

She considered him for a moment, then nodded, looking towards Leo as she turned around, “don’t stay out too late. We all know how you get when you don’t get a full eight hours, Prince Grouchy Pants.”

“Says the pain who giggles deliriously about anything if she gets less than seven,” Leo snorted derisively, pushing his hand lightly against her shoulder. “I have business to discuss with our brother, but I plan to go to sleep after we’ve finished, if it puts your mind at ease.” 

“Just don’t be too long,” Elise said, her blonde hair swaying behind her as she stepped from the tent, leaving Leo and Xander alone with one another. 

“You wished to speak to me?” Xander asked after he was certain Elise was truly gone, sitting back down at the war table. “Is it about Corrin?”

Leo sighed, crossing his arms over his chest as he stared pensively towards the tent flaps, “I’m concerned about her whereabouts. Reports state she was last seen fleeing the field of battle with a mysterious blue-haired woman and a figure identified as her manservant.”

“Jakob?” Xander asked, arching his brow, “I am not terribly surprised, if that’s the case. He would do anything for our sister, up to and including abandoning Nohr. And why would he have any loyalty?”

Slowly, Xander shook his head, though it pained him to speak the words, “what have we done for him? Our little princess is the reason he still has a job, perhaps even the reason he still has his life.”

“She’ll be well cared for, then,” his brother said blandly, though something was warring across his expression, his body stiff…. Even for Leo, “Xander.”

“You have no reason to hold back, Leo. I am not going to turn you away for stating an opinion,” he said, leaning forward in his seat, looking up into Leo’s face as his younger brother swallowed and turned his full attention towards Xander. “Speak your mind.”

“I want your permission to track her…. In secret, without Father knowing.” 

Idly running his thumb over his lips, Xander nodded. 

It wasn’t a risk he would have asked Leo to make of his own accord, but he trusted his brother to be careful and if he wished to take the plunge? Xander was not about to stop him. After all, Corrin was his sister, as well. 

“Very well. I ask only that you keep me informed,” he smiled at Leo, watching shock spark in his younger brother’s eyes, followed by relief and resolve, “I will keep your secret, Leo.”

A brief silence passed between them, Leo’s pale face softening, hands falling back to his side. “Thank you,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper before he turned and fled the tent. 

Xander watched him go, sitting quietly for a moment to clear his mind before he at last stood, deciding that now was a good a time as any to follow his own advice and try to get some rest. 

* * *

“Are you nearly finished, Laslow?” Xander asked, feeling his retainer pull the fastenings on his breastplate tight, “I need to address the army before our orders arrive.”

“Of course, My Lord,” came the lightly accented reply, the response airy enough that he could well picture the open grin on the young face. “My apologies. You know the Royal Armor can be a bit of a pain to put on.” 

He snorted, the banter a welcome distraction from what might otherwise be stormy thoughts. 

In truth, Xander was not looking forward to another campaign against the Hoshidans, who had been instigating border skirmishes for over a decade, attempting to send assassins to Windmire, and generally causing chaos. It made the accusations of the High Prince Ryoma rather amusing, all things considered, and brought to bear the question of how sheltered and pampered the Hoshidan Royal

Family had truly been behind their precious magical barrier. 

It had not been Xander’s idea to assassinate Queen Mikoto.

There was such a thing as honorable warfare, something that King Garon had long ago forgotten, but regardless of how it had come to pass? Xander was grateful to finally be able to take the war to Hoshido, and though he didn’t relish the idea of innocent people suffering he was most certainly glad that he finally had the opportunity to swiftly end the war and return kind for kind. 

Peace-loving Queen indeed. 

“Is there any word of Hoshidan troop movements?” Xander asked as Laslow at last pulled away, reaching for the familiar hilt of Siegfried, a quiet hum traveling up his arm as his soul was filled with a sudden sense of rightness. 

“The bulk of the Hoshidan Force was traveling North by Northeast, last we received word,” Laslow said, Xander turning about to look him in the eyes. “Considering they’re traveling by foot they probably haven’t gotten too far. After all, the day is still young.”

Xander hummed in consideration, placing Siegfried into its place at his side, glancing at himself in the mirror they’d brought to ensure all armor was properly applied. The royal family, of course, must represent the best of Nohr, something he rather thought was pointless when they would see him bloodied and bleeding as they had many times before, but Father insisted.   
When had he grown so vain? 

“I will ride out ahead myself while you assist Leo and Camilla in preparing our small force to march back to Windmire,” Xander said. “I don’t suspect it will take me long to guess their numbers myself so that I can give the most accurate report possible to Father.”

“Always the perfectionist, My Lord,” came the reply, accompanied by an easy smile as the young man reached up to anxiously rub the back of his neck through his collar. “Are you certain you don’t want company? I’d be remiss not to offer it, not when it is my sworn duty to protect you.” 

“Thank you, Laslow,” Xander said, trying not to grit his teeth at the thought of what the price of such loyalty had proven to be, “but I shall be fine. It will go more smoothly if I go on my own.” 

They exchanged a long look, Laslow’s expression bewildered, though not hurt. It had been only a little over a year since they had been together, after all, Laslow’s assignment to him against his own will, the order of a father who was displeased that he had still not gotten over the deaths of his last retainers. He was so young, Xander thought, too young to be as skilled as he was with that blade and have a tongue so sharp, something in his dark eyes haunted by familiar shadows. 

It was painful to see something so similar in another, though it was also a comfort, he supposed. 

For a moment longer they simply stared at one another, silence ended when Laslow at last bowed, flipping a strand of brown hair out of his eyes when he at last straightened. “As My Lord wishes. The will of Crown Prince Xander shall be done.”

He snorted, shaking his head as he walked past Laslow, patting his shoulder as he passed, “go get ready, Laslow. We all have a long day ahead of us.” 

“Of course, My Lord,” he heard the young man mutter as he passed, raising a hand to his eyes as he blinked into the gods-forsaken light. 

Still, if this was what was required for agricultural prosperity he would spend every day underneath the bright blue sky, sleeping in a world obscured by mists at night if it meant that no Nohrian would ever starve to death in their home again. There was very little he would not do for his people, his resolve cemented as he walked through the camp, listening to voices shout about a meeting to be held, the eyes of every soldier he passed following him. 

It was something he had long since grown used to, though when he was young it had made him feel anxious. Being a lad of barely seventeen summers forced into the military, finding himself in a command position? It had not been a pleasant experience, especially not when the threat of dying was very real.

But it had never been the Nohrian way to shrink away from danger. 

Carefully, Xander made his way to the center of the camp, watching as the forces gathered to see him speak. Ascending the makeshift stage they had constructed upon arrival, apropos for both speeches and other public announcements, Xander projected his voice, clearing his throat and watching a hush fall over the forces gathered here. Closing his eyes as nervousness gathered in the pit of his stomach, he exhaled slowly and thought of rabbits. 

“Men and women of Nohr’s great army,” Xander began, his voice ringing out over the grassy fields, barely lost amongst the heavy, dark fabric of the tents. “Today we stand on the precipice of another escalation in this decades long war. I look into your eyes and I see weariness, a weariness I myself well understand. There has scarcely been a time in my life when I do not recall being at odds with Hoshido, and it seems as though peace is a long way off.” 

He could feel their agreement, hear it in the soft sound of muttering that bubbled up before the clearing fell once again into silence. Taking a breath, he continued, grasping Siegfired’s hilt in his hand, “but the fall of their barrier marks the final push into Hoshido. Once we have conquered their lands, we will finally have the food and resources we require to recover from the plague that took my mother’s life and claimed your sons and daughters, your mothers and fathers, your wives and your husbands!” 

This time the response would louder, a cheer rather than a whisper, Xander’s eyes lighting briefly on Leo, standing between his two retainers with a small smile on his face. A few paces away from him, Camilla stood with Elise, the later of whom was practically bouncing up and down with excitement, her wide violet eyes trained on him. 

“After this war comes to an end, we will finally be afforded the time to recoup our losses. No more will we live in constant fear of the Hoshidan threat, no longer will they deny our pleas for assistance!

After years of being denied aid under Sumeragi and terrorized by Mikoto, we will level the uneven field! The end of this war shall mark the start of a new era for Nohr, an era in which our people no longer struggle just to survive!”

The cheers turned into shouts and hoots of agreement, the fanfare dying away as Xander turned his attention to addressing more pressing issues. He spoke of assignments, of the ins and outs of their future campaigns and the hold they hoped to establish in this region, he spoke of supply chains and his own plans to return to Windmire, he stoked their pride to boost morale, attempted to instill in them the sincere hope that things would get better. 

This time, they would be successful. 

This time, they would win the day. 

When all was said and done, he turned from the stage, walking towards the area that had been cleared to stable the horses (the wyverns, due to sometimes desiring to eat the horses, were stabled on the opposite end of camp). There, he found Camilla waiting for him, gently stroking the nose of his war stallion and feeding the great, needy beast chunks of carrot, her single indigo eye falling towards him as he approached. 

Carefully, she brushed a strand of her lavender hair that had come loose from her braid behind her ear and offered him a smile. “Laslow informs me you’re about to recklessly ride off to scout the hills and plains for signs of the retreating Hoshidan army.”

“I won’t approach them,” Xander told her, noting that Midnight (a name Elise had come up with when she was eight summers of age) had already been saddled. “Do you not trust me to take care of myself, Dearest Little Sister?”

Camilla laughed at him, bumping affectionately into his shoulder, though her eyes remained trained on Midnight. “You need to be more careful with your life, Xander. I know how recklessly you use your status to shield us from father, dearest Elise most of all, but you are the Crown Prince. Without you, Nohr has no hope.”

“It has you, Leo, and Elise,” Xander objected quietly. 

“We’re not half the leader you are, not even collectively. Leo is bright and could do a good enough job ruling one day, but we both know he’s far too young to take on the burden now, and I don’t have nearly the moral fiber you do.” This time, she did look to him, her lips drawn into a soft pout, though the sorrow reflected in the depths of her expression was more sincere. “Xander…”

She dropped her arms to her side, stepping towards him and reaching out to grasp his hands in her own, “I already lost one sibling this week. Don’t make me lose another, or I’ll never forgive you.”  
The words jolted through him like a summer storm, but he shook the surprise away, raising her knuckles to his lips to press a soft kiss to them, “Little Sister, I will not die. I promise you that.”

“I’m holding you to your word,” she muttered, then gently pulled her hands away. “I’ll see to our little company’s efficiency, my dear brother. Don’t worry a precious blonde hair on your saintly head.” 

Laughing, Xander turned his attention back to Midnight, who snorted at him eagerly, pawing at the ground with more than a pit of impatience. He paused, reaching up to scratch his faithful companion behind the ear, a smile touching his lips, “I trust you, Camilla.”

There was no response, but he could hear her smile as she walked away.

* * *

He had memorized the maps of this area before coming here, aware that the small glade he was leading Midnight through bordered the side of the road the Hoshidans were surely taking towards what he could only surmise to be Jinya Fortress. Xander had heard rumors of the old place, an old wrought stone building with the delicate wood roofs of all Hoshidan buildings, impenetrable save for the single wrought door barring the entrance. 

A million times he had considered ways to take it.

Arrows aflame through the old wooden roof to smoke out their enemies. 

Cutting off their supply lines and placing the old castle under siege.

Simply storming the damn place with their heavily armored forces en masse, something no Hoshidan could match, and taking it through brute strength. 

Pulled from his thoughts by the feeling of moisture penetrating his heavy armor and the sound of Midnight snorting nervously, Xander looked around, brow furrowing further as he realized that the small glade suddenly looked a great deal more like the Forest of the Forlorn than it should have. It seemed shadowy, and a thick mist clung to everything, obscuring the path white that seemed to grow more dense by the moment, freezing him in place as he attempted to gain his bearings. 

Something was terribly wrong, the static sensation of being watched making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. 

Carefully, he reached out to calm Midnight, stroking the animal’s dark mane, watching the fear in the horse’s eyes war with his trust of his rider. Still, he was well trained, a war horse in every sense, and the trust won out, though that wariness did not vanish.

Sometimes, he worried horse and rider were becoming far too much alike for their own good. 

Taking a breath, he trudged forward, the mists growing thicker and ticker until a shape began to form within the shifting white, the figure of a woman in a long dress, a pair of glowing yellow eyes manifesting on her face. The sight froze him in place, his entire body going rigid as he was filled with the sudden sensation that the shape had a sentience and was actively staring at him, sizing him up, though it was something he did not have much time to contemplate when the figure began to sing. 

He could come up with no other explanation for the sudden chorus of voices that filled the glade, echoing through the mists and getting lost amongst the trunks of the trees. It was a single voice, a haunting woman’s voice, like the sound of rainfall against metal or fabric, harmonizing with itself endlessly until the song penetrated Xander’s armor and shook his very bones. 

There were no discernible lyrics, not that he could understand, though there did seem to be a rhythm to the vocalizations. He thought he might almost understand if he listened hard enough, closing his eyes to try to pay closer attention to the voice itself only to stumble forward, catching himself against a tree trunk. Startled, he looked up only to see those yellow eyes still staring at him, the figure dancing and swaying as white shapes began to coalesce before his eyes, moving to the phantom harmony. 

There, formed of shadow and fog, he saw the familiar streets of Notre Sagesse. Among the cozy buildings and tight streets, built long before the rise of the cavalry and the need for wide causeways, he could see peasants milling. All at once, as the music shifted back into its refrain, he pulled away from the city as if he were mounted on a wyvern, Mount Sagesse coming into view before morphing into the shape of a monumental Hoshidan-style palace nestled among the branches of many ancient trees. 

Slowly, surely, it pulled in, revealing a hauntingly familiar shape standing and overlooking a balcony. Everything around her faded away, and he found himself face to face with a life-size replica o Corrin, complete with glowing red eyes filled with a deep fondness that made his throat tight. 

The figure reached out, ghostly hand tingling wetly against the skin of his cheek as those eyes burned up into his face. 

For a moment, they simply locked eyes, Xander lost in the moment. He wasn’t sure what to think, seeing her dressed in the heavy Hoshdian clothing, smiling up at him as if he were coming back to the Northern Fortress to see her after months separated. It made his heart ache, and though he knew that she was not real a part of him longed to reach up and cover her hand with his own, to tell her that he was sorry for what had happened and to either plead with her to return or else beg with her never cross the Spine again, lest Father smite her where she stand. 

The illusion was broken the moment another ghostly hand fell on his shoulder, his head snapping toward the figure of the High Prince, whose head was inclined upward slightly to stare up into Xander’s face with knowing dark red-brown eyes. It was a look that implied familiarity, or even friendship, something he was certain he would never see on the High Prince’s face, remembering all too clearly the sneer he had worn their first time meeting face to face in battle. 

The misty siren changed her song yet again, the notes reaching a desperate crescendo. It was some sort of bridge, and the two figures vanished only for Xander to find himself staring into his own eyes.

They burned at him, burned with a fury and a hurt so deep that he knew even before he saw the second figure coalesce before him who it would be. 

Father stood, sneering down at him, his eyes as black as the Nohrian sky at night and filled with a rage as cold as the northern winds. The two figures circled one another briefly, tension between them clear, tearing him in two as he waited for something to change… Something to break. He knew he could not stand to see this stand off any longer, that it soon must come to some manner of head or he would be driven mad by it.

There was a sudden flash so bright that it blinded Xander momentarily, another shift of the music, and when his vision cleared he could see Siegfried in his doppleganger’s hand, the tip protruding from his father’s back.

And just like that, the single sight broke the spell. 

Spinning on his heel, Xander swung himself up into Midnight’s saddle, ushering his his loyal steed onward with a desperate shout. His entire world lurched as the horse took off, charging the yellow eyed woman, banishing her the moment he raced through the figure, riding wild towards the edge of the glade where Xander could see light beginning to penetrate the trees. 

Around them, the mist began to dissipate, his heart still shuddering with the implication that he could ever be the one to murder his own father in cold blood. He refused to even entertain the notion, though the chords of the song still vibrated his bones and hummed through his chest as if they were pulsing to the desperate beat of his pounding heart. 

He could hear the plates of his armor shaking with the galloping motion of his mount, the sound of Midnight’s hooves biting into the dirt thundering in his ears, as the world around him burst into bright morning sun once more. Pulling on the reigns, he only managed to barely stop them both from tumbling over the edge of a grassy slope, leaning over the neck of his long time companion and gently stroking his mane to comfort them both. 

For a moment, the entire world was his horse, the feeling of Midnight’s body heat and the saddle meant him grounding him. It was enough to remind him where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, the sensation of being watched once more causing his head to snap upward…. 

Only to meet a familiar pair of dark eyes. 

High Prince Ryoma’s eyes. 

The world that had previously been frenzied with motion came to a jarring halt, rendering them both the only two people in the entire world, though Xander was aware of the entire Hoshidan infantry passing in front of him on the well worn road. For a single moment, he gripped Siegfried, a sick worry that this haughty dragon would force him to break his promise to Camilla filling his stomach and lodging itself in his chest.

But then it was over, and sound and sensation returned to him.

Finally acutely aware of how tightly his hands gripped Midnight’s reigns, Xander breathed out a sigh, clicked his tongue, and turned back towards the glade. Inhaling deeply, he forced all visions of glowing yellow eyes from his mind and urged Midnight back towards camp, determined th one day engage his opponent during a time when it would not endanger his remaining family and the hope of Nohr to do so.


	4. Glow in the Mist

_In the wake of shattered memories, pieces broken,_   
_Hoping for some desperate connection, bone white, blood red._   
_You sift through the debris, desperately searching for a conquest_   
_A victory over the puzzle that is your life, a warming revelation._   
_It is now that you ask yourself what is your birthright?_   
_Is it in the familial bonds you never knew or the warmth of a stranger’s touch?_

 

“You don’t need to help me with the tie, Felicia, I’ve got it myself,” Corrin said quietly, watching as the former maid furrowed her brow in concentration and shook her head adamantly, finally successfully managing to fasten her former mistresses’ sash with only a little work. 

“Nonsense! I came here to help, and that’s what I’m going to do!” 

Corrin watched her face in the mirror for a moment, smoothing her hands over the front of her fine kimono, still not quite certain how to feel about herself in anything other than Nohrian garments; this all made her feel far too feminine. She hadn’t really liked it in Hoshido, either, though Queen Mikoto had insisted on giving her a completely new wardrobe, and would tell her long stories about her childhood while she brushed out Corrin’s then-black hair every night. It was something she had conceded to only out of guilt, though she always missed her training fatigues, the feeling of grappling with Camilla, of a practice blade in hand as she toed off against Xander or Leo… 

But to Ryoma, to Hinoka, to Sakura? 

She had been a flower, something to protect, a summer blossom trapped in the cold repose of a winter fortress who must be nurtured back to health and beauty by a gentle hand and guarded at all costs. 

“You didn’t have to come and find me, Felicia,” Corrin said, turning around to look into her former maidservant’s face. “You could have gone back to the Ice Tribe or could have sought new assignment.”

“No one but you would put up with me,” Felicia said, face quickly flushing as pink as her own hair before she glanced away, ashamed. “I’m not a very good maid, Lady Corrin, and I’m not as close to Father as Flora is. I don’t belong back in the Ice Tribe and I think we both know it, so really this is the only place I could go.”

Reaching out, Corrin briefly placed a hand against Felicia’s shoulder, not really sure what to say before she nodded, exhaling softly. If she was going to accept Jakob’s reasoning, his undying loyalty for her due to an act of kindness motivated by loneliness as much as just anger while she was nothing more than a child, she would have to respect Felicia’s reasoning. 

“Okay, but let’s try to work towards being friends,” Corrin smiled, brushing her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t want you to feel trapped here. I’m…” Biting her bottom lip, Corrin forced out the words, knowing full well that they were true and deserved to be said, no matter how difficult it was. “I’m not my father, Felicia.” 

Felicia’s smile turned a shade sadder, “I know, and I’m grateful for that, but —”

A knock on the frame of the wooden door that separated Corrin’s private chambers from the rest of the vast apartment, more of a royal suite than anything, intrrupted whatever Felicia had been about to say. Deciding that it was something they could breach when the other woman was more comfortable, Corrin raised her head and bid her guest to enter. 

Into the room walked Azura, followed by a stern-faced Jakob, who appeared to once more be fretting about nothing in particular. He had a way of constantly focusing on any inadequacies or failures to the point of obsession, especially in himself, so much so that she worried about him now that he didn’t have to be the perfect butler for his own safety. Corrin wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he’d saved his wages for years on end only to spend them on her upkeep now, even going so far as to pay for ship fare to help her escape her families. 

She only wanted him to be happy. 

“You can’t honestly mean to attempt to contact the Hoshidans so soon after fleeing!” Jakob snapped at Azura, who didn’t look at him while responding, holding a roll of paper and an ink well in her delicate hands. “That plan is absolutely ludicrous, Azura. They seek to kidnap Lady Corrin!” 

“They will not invade Izumo to do so. This place is under the protection of the Archduke, and Hoshido is nothing like Nohr,” Azura said in a voice so calm that it was almost unnerving. “They respect the sovereignty of the independent nations.” 

Corrin reached up, pulling her fingers through her thick hair, deep seated affection and personal bias warring with what logic and instinct both told her. Worrying her lip between her teeth, she heaved a heavy sigh and walked towards her guests, not bothering to feign a smile.

It’s not as if she were entertaining the Archduke, something not uncommon at all since she had arrived here.

“Ryoma was willing to stage a military operation with the express purpose of luring me to a place where I could be retrieved by Hoshidan forces safely,” she said at last, reason finally defeating the last strands of sentimentality she otherwise felt. “I’m not sure that we can trust him not to do something of the like again.”

“Hoshido will still be more open to negotiations,” Azura protested, speaking over Jakob before he could get in a single word of support, “you know this, Corrin.”

“Ryoma will zealously do anything to drag me back to Hoshido with him and put me under what’s essentially house arrest,” Corrin protested, “and Hinoka won’t be much better. Takumi hates me, and if Sakura steps out of line the others will come down hard on her. At least I can trust my Nohrian siblings to avoid me to keep me safe, no matter how hurt they are. We may not be able to negotiate with them as openly, but any attempt we do make to reach out to them will be taken seriously and not overlooked out of sheer, stubborn self-righteousness.” 

Azura opened her mouth slowly, then shut it again, her brow creasing in concern, though she didn’t raise an immediate objection. Instead, she seemed to be considering how to best approach the argument and convince Corrin of her point of view, though that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. Looking at Jakob and seeing the relief and understanding on his face, the feeling that she had done the right thing in raising objection to Azura’s idea rooted itself firmly in her mind. 

It wasn’t that she thought Nohr was this incredible place beyond all approach and that Hoshido was a horrible hell scape monstrosity. 

Quite the contrary, actually; she knew Hoshido to be a place where people were well-fed, happy, and free. During her time there she had experienced joyous festivals and quiet family banquets, long walks through winding streets, and stunning tower views. She had sampled delicious food and found herself surrounded by a culture as vibrant and colorful as the clothing they wore, like a breath of fresh air after a long and dreary winter trapped indoors. 

But it wasn’t home.

It felt dream-like, like a long sleep from which she had finally woken only to find her life in shambles. 

“Corrin,” Azura said softly, taking a step forward and reaching out to clasp Corrin’s hand in her own dainty grasp, “you are the hero of this ballad, and it is your choices that will weave the notes of fate into a song. The Archduke has foreseen your role in all of this, and you will be instrumental in bringing peace between Nohr and Hoshido. You must believe your word will mean something to both of your families.” 

She opened her mouth to protest, attempting to explain that she didn’t believe in fate the way Azura did, that the Nohrians didn’t have diviners and that all their seers were purported monsters who saw the future written in the blood of their victims, but she was cut off by the sudden sounds of chaos and shouting from beyond the thin walls of the apartment. Spinning on her heel, Corrin swallowed her response and pulled her skirt up, dashing towards the door with all the determination and fire every Nohrian Warrior Princess was said to possess. 

Distantly, she was aware of the shouts behind her, of the reminders that there were guards who could handle whatever altercation was happening, but Corrin’s battle instincts blazed, sharpened to a cutting edge by Xander’s patience and diligence. Bursting out of the front door, Corrin saw a commotion in the palace market, an odd man with bright orange hair and a busy tail pinned to the ground by two men with spears. He thrashed and snarled, the animal-like ears on the top of his head pressed flat against his skull as he scratched at the cobblestones with sharp claws, his teeth elongated into elegant, canine points. 

“Ouch! You’re pulling my fur!” the man shouted. “How would you like it if I pulled on your fur?!” 

They seemed primed to respond with force, but Corrin dashed forward, her bare feet slapping against the paving stones as she stumbled to a halt hair’s width from the guardsmen. Narrowing her eyes into slits, she reached and firmly grasped one of their wrists, earning herself a wide-eyed stare, watching as the man’s mouth fell open. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded, channeling every commanding stare she’d ever witnessed her eldest sibling give. “Why are you accosting this man in the open?”

“I —” he began, fumbling with his words, his grip on the fox-eared man loosening just long enough for him to scramble from his other captor’s grasp. “He’s a thief, milady. We caught him taking fruit from a stall in the lower markets and chased him all the way up here.”

“It was right in the open!” the man protested, rubbing his wrists, the hair on his head bristling as he stared at his attackers with narrowed eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that humans just leave their fruit right in the open and then don’t expect people to take it?”

“Listen,” Corrin began, dropping the man’s wrist to rise to her full height, knowing that she wasn’t very intimidating without the bulk of Nohrian armor, “he clearly doesn’t understand commerce. Can’t my people and I just pay for it and you let him walk away?”

The guards exchanged wary glances but quickly nodded, Jakob already hurrying past her to talk about the price of the ‘stolen’ goods. Turning around, Corrin brushed a strand of flyaway hair behind her ear and padded across the ground towards the strange beast-man, who rose slowly to his feet. When he looked at her, his red-brown eyes turned warm and he smiled widely, the stress and anger draining from his body, leaving him with a harmlessly swishing tail and a curious gaze. 

“You fixed it?” he asked, taking a step towards her before he reached out and pulled her into a warm hug, Corrin finding herself pressed into a shirt that smelled of dried fish and campfire smoke, “wow!  Some humans sure are nice!” Just as quickly, he pushed her away, his hands sitting heavily on her shoulders, “I guess I owe you one!” 

“I…” she caught Azura’s eye, watching as the woman gestured for her to follow back into the apartment. “I guess if you want to repay me, you can follow me and we can talk about it in private.” She looked up into his face, shocked at how tall he was, taller than anyone she had seen in the East before, nearly as tall as the men of the West, “I’m Corrin, by the way.”  
“Kaden,” he replied, smiling just enough to show the points of his shockingly white teeth, “traveling kitsune on a quest to repay kind deeds done to me by humans. I guess you’re the next on my list, huh?”

As he dropped his hands and began to take long strides towards Azura’s shape standing in the doorway, Corrin was struck with the distinct feeling that something lurked just beneath that disarming grim, hidden in the depths of a pair of clever eyes.

* * *

 

In the mountainside forests of Nohr, thick with thistles, brambles, and thorns of all sort, Corrin had read stories of men and women with piercing yellow eyes and wide, toothy grins. They were family oriented creatures, shy and elusive, but savage when provoked, only wandering into the realm of the proper Nohrian city when food shortages drove them to hunt livestock … Or humans, though Leo had claimed the later information was a piece of propaganda meant to engender hatred against these Wolfskin. 

During The Plague, it had been easy to blame them, and even now that the illness had passed over the land their pelts were valuable to poachers, of which there were many.

Here in the East it turned out they had similar stories, though it was foxes that danced through the dreams of the Easterners, playful with toothy grins, friendly to travelers on the road and always generous to those who showed great generosity. It was only when their own sacred territory was trespassed upon that they became like the Wolfskin of the West, creatures of teeth and claws, clever tricksters who sent enemies to their doom with a laugh and a snarl. 

And Kaden was one of those foxes, a Kitsune. 

“I wasn’t really expecting to be rescued by a bunch of nice ladies and a grouchy man,” he said as Felicia delicately cleaned his palms where he had scraped them against the cobblestone while he attempted to fight off the guards. “I’m glad I met you! Just like I’m glad I met the woman who fed me half a roast duck in the forest on the way here after I was chased off the trail by poachers.”  
Jakob gave Corrin a wary look, measuring what looked like fishing line to string up in the garden with the intent to use it to dry linens. She had noticed him trying to make the place more like Nohr ever since he had first arrived and was no longer sure whose benefit it was for - his own, or hers. 

“There are still poachers in the forests?” Azura asked, her soft voice pulling Corrin’s gaze away from her dutifully working former butler. “I had thought the Royal Family had rangers patrolling the region to honor the sacred pact between our dragon ancestors and the original beastkin?”

Kaden’s dark eyes moved smoothly toward Azura, seeming to take her in, gaze lingering a bit too long on the small green-blue stone that hung from her throat. Slowly, they traveled back towards Azura’s face and then shifted to Corrin, repeating his actions as he stared at the Dragonstone that rested against her pale skin, seeming to pulse with a life of its own. She watched as he reached up with the clawed hand Felcia wasn’t attending to, running his fingers lightly over a dark red stone sewn into the fabric of his billowing scarf. 

His expression was oddly subdued, feeling out of place on a face that had only been highly animated in the brief time Corrin had known him. Then his smile widened to split his face in a crsecent grin, a look of understanding washing over him as he relaxed further into Felicia’s touch, “oh,” he said. “You’re dragonkin, right? I guess I should have known. You have the eyes for it, yellow like butter and red like autumn’s leaves. I like it.” 

She wasn’t sure how to respond so she offered him a sheepish smile, drawing her legs to her chest rather than folding him underneath her like Ryoma and Queen Regent Mikoto had taught her to the first time she’d dined with her biological family. Placing her chin on her knees, her eyes focused on the stone at Kaden’s neck before she looked up to meet his eyes, finding him staring back at her with his head tilted slightly to one side.

Corrin desperately wanted to ask if he could feel something like a beast clawing inside of him every time his emotions got out of hand, if that stone was the only thing holding his baser instincts back, but she somehow didn’t think it was really appropriate. After all, they had only just met, hadn’t they?

So instead she heaved a sigh and closed her eyes, searching for the words to ask her next question, tasting them on the tip of her tongue. “You really want to repay me? For what I did out there?”

“I have to,” Kaden said simply as Felicia began to wrap his hand in bandages. “It’s part of the deal, you know? Every time someone else me, I have to help them in return. It’s just the way things work, otherwise the cosmic balance is thrown off and the gods in nature are displeased. And we can’t be having that, can we?”

He said the words as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and though Azura nodded in agreement, it only served to remind Corrin how little she still knew of the world beyond the Northern Fortress. She could read until she nodded off over her book and the glow stone in the lamp flickered out, but reading was no real substitute for experience, not when it felt different to swing a sword and have it meet flesh than it did to hit a wooden dummy. 

Once more, Corrin had her thoughts interrupted by the sound of movement as Jakob stood, excusing himself to go make food. Looking out the window into the little garden, Corrin caught a glimpse of the sky, the sun at its zenith reminding her that she had spent most of the morning getting ready and then scrambling about to accommodate Kaden and hadn’t eaten in all of the confusion.

“If you need to go and eat something, I can hold down the fort here,” Felicia said with a small smile. “I just need to finish bandaging up our new patient’s hands,” she said, her fair brow furrowing in deep concern and concentration. 

“Just bring me back some fish, okay?” Kaden asked. “Once your pretty pink friend finishes bandaging me, I just want to eat and sleep until you decide what you want me to do.”As if on cue, he arched his back and yawned, his oddly long, pink tongue curling out of his mouth to showcase his teeth once more. “Don’t worry about leaving us alone, Lady Corrin.” 

Pushing herself quickly to her feet, she set off after Jakob, intending to let herself go and have a long conversation with him about everything that had happened in the past few weeks. She desperately needed him again, so far from everything that she had ever found familiar, certain that he had probably done more than enough research about this place in the time since their arrival to compensate for the gaps in her knowledge. 

But really, what she wanted was just a piece of Nohr.

A piece of home. 

Stopped dead in her advances by the tug of a soft hand, Corrin turned around to look up into the face of Azura, who grasped tightly onto her wrist. Dropping her hand, she instead reached up to weave her fingers through the long, blue strands of her hair, her expression grim as she motioned for Corrin to follow her into one of the small side rooms for an impromptu audience. 

Biting back a sigh, Corrin followed Azura, crossing her arms uncomfortably over her chest as she looked towards the door. For a moment, Azura’s anticipation hung in the air between them, wavering back and forth before Azura took the step over the edge and spoke, her voice unwavering. “You should use Kaden to send a message to Sakura. Of all your siblings, she’s the most likely to listen to your request for an audience, and she would be sure to keep it discreet if you asked her to.” 

Corrin’s head snapped toward Azura, her mouth hanging open for a moment before she reached up and tugged her hair out of its restraints jsut to run her fingers through it in frustration. “Azura —”

“No. The future is clear, but it is still dependent upon you. If you do not act, you could doom us all to a fate which you cannot possibly comprehend,” the willowy woman said, taking a step towards her, delicate hands falling upon Corrin’s shoulders. “Whether you believe it or not, you’re in a unique position to be able to do something about this, and if you don’t act soon…” Azura’s face dropped, looking up at Corrin with piercing yellow eyes from underneath her lashes. “Our siblings could die. They will die. Fighting one another for a war their fathers started.”

The words struck her like a blast of lightning, her imagination getting ahead of her as she imagined the face of each of her siblings, broken and bleeding, the light gone from their eyes. Swallowing heavily, she drew in a cold breath through her teeth and steeled herself, swallowing past the lump that had formed in her throat, “I’ll think about it. I still don’t know if contacting Hoshido first is the best move.”

“But you’ll do something?” Azura demanded.

Timidly, Corrin nodded. “I’m not convinced my actions will mean anything, but… But if I can do something to save them… You’re right. I have to act.”

The answering smile was gentle, though it lasted only a moment as Azura pulled away, sweeping out the door like an ephemeral spring breeze to leave Corrin alone with her tumultuous thoughts.

* * *

 

In the middle of the night Corrin woke with a start, barely having time to pull on her comfort old threadbare Nohrian garb before being ushered, half asleep through the streets of the Palace Complex and into the inner sanctum itself. She was barely aware of anything other than the solemnity of the guards sent to fetch her and the fact that she was utterly alone and out of place in her shirt, trousers, and heavy riding boots traipsing over the delicate wood flooring of the Archduke’s home.

Through passages and stairwells she traveled, going higher and higher until she and her escorts broke into the open air. Around her, a breeze rustled the leaves of the massive tree that cradled the Palace Izumo protectively within its branches, the sound of a trapdoor shutting behind her making her jump only to realize that she was not truly alone when her eyes lighted on the ghostly form of

Archduke Izana standing with his back towards her. 

Hesitantly, Corrin walked forward, her eyes focusing on his uncharacteristically unkempt hair and the way he was dressed haphazardly, as if he’d just stumbled out of bed himself. When he looked towards her, his face was as pale as his robes, the smile that seemed perpetually plastered on his face replaced by something grim and all too familiar — Furrowed brow, staring out over the cold battlements on the eve before their journey towards Windmire, wind tousled hair… 

Cutting off her own thoughts, she opened her mouth to speak only to be silenced when the Archduke quietly tossed his head and pointed into the distance. Carefully, she approached the edge of the roof, looking out over the gently rolling hills, bordered by the ocean, mists rising off of it to cover the entire land. At first she didn’t notice anything, her vision obscured by the heavy night time fog that blanketed the world in a deep sense of unease, but then her eyes caught it —

The soft green glow from within the rolling clouds beneath them, spread out amongst the hills themselves, like a gently illuminated sea of mists that stilled her heartbeat and stole her breath.

Head snapping back over her shoulder, she looked at the Archduke, who was staring back at her with that disturbingly grim expression on his face. She didn’t know what to say, though she could nearly feel the cold winds of the West carried with that green light, could feel the true night close in around her, this time more of a threat than a comfort. 

Why?

How?

When?

The thoughts in her head scattered when the Archduke finally spoke. “The look on your face confirms my darkest suspicions. I had hoped that it was just some sort of mass infestation of lightning bugs, but…” He laughed, the sound filled with empty humor, “it’s Nohr’s army, isn’t it?”

Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, Corrin nodded, her eyes flickering back to the halo of Glow-Lights trapped within the cloud layer, probably to dispel some of the fog. Already, she could smell the animals, the rot of goat carcasses, the smell of dung and sweat and leather and steel, all wafting together to make an odor as comforting as it was unpleasant. She remembered how it clung to anyone who marched with the Nohrian army until they’d scrubbed it off their skin, a scent that told her that her family was coming to visit her directly after marching with the army.

Though marching was the wrong word when so much of the Nohrian Military was Cavalry. 

“It won’t be long,” she told him in a soft voice, still staring into the fog below. “They’ll be here much more quickly than any army of foot soldiers could be. And you only have the guard — The only people allowed weapons here.” 

“Yes,” the Archduke muttered, stepping up until they were side by side, his hand falling onto her shoulder. “Princess Corrin, if all else fails, you must —”

“Flee?” She asked him, staring up into his face, her stomach churning when he nodded. 

Her fists balled at her sides to stop her fingers from twitching as she imagined herself holding a blade in her hand, standing against the tide of the Nohrian army all alone if need be, just to give these people time to evacuate. Surely they would take her captive so King Garon would have the satisfaction of killing her himself, she thought, and she could find a way to escape on the road, she could… 

The dragon inside her stirred, angry and restless that its place of sanctuary would be threatened this way. 

Reaching up, she grasped the stone hanging around her neck and shook her head vehemently, opening her mouth to protest only for a finger to slowly close her jaw. Eyes clearing, she could see the Archduke looking down at her with an expression of concern on his face as he slowly shook his head. 

“No, Princess. You can’t stay. You have to run, run far away. Let them take Izumo as a staging area, if they must, but do not let yourself be taken. Nohr…” he sighed, dropping his hand back to his side. “Nohr is like a black tide sweeping over the land to leave the people in darkness. You have to kill their dark heart, but you can’t do that if they snuff out your light before it truly has the chance to shine.”

She could see the resolve in his expression but refused to submit, backing slowly away and shaking her head, spinning to yank the trap door open. Vaguely, Corrin heard him shouting in protest after her, but the specifics of whatever he’d said were lost in the thunder of her boot falls against the wooden floor as she raced back towards the apartment. Inside of her, the seed of a plan had started to bloom, the beginning of the last bit of hope she had that they could somehow stave off the Nohrian army. 

Azura’s words about losing her family ringing in her ears as she slammed the doors to her apartment back open, Corrin found Kaden already awake and waiting for her. 

When she saw him, relief immediately washed over her and she reached out, seizing him but the shoulders even as he reached out for her in concern, gently cupping her face with the easy intimacy his people seemed to possess. Shaking, Corrin surrendered to his touch, his hands slowly sliding downward to grasp her upper arms as she leaned her head against his chest and panted, fighting back sobs of anguish as she struggled to speak. 

“Kaden,” she muttered, “how fast can a kitsune run?”

A hand reached out to gently soothe over her scalp, heavy and warm, and his voice responded in a quiet tone filled with the vibrating energy of anticipation. “As fast as the wind, if we go on all fours.”

“Then I need you to fly like the wind,” Corrin told him as she raised her head once more, staring up into his face. “I need you to fly like the wind to Shirasagi and tell them that Izumo is under threat by the Nohrian army. I need you to tell them to send reinforcements because Izumo can’t defend itself. And if…” she drew in a shuddering breath, her throat constricting as she thought about all the implications of what she was about to say. “If they try to argue with you, Kaden, tell them Princess Kamui herself has seen the army and would not seen the Izumites suffer on her behalf.”

Recognition flickered across the man’s features, his eyes hardening for a breath before his entire face adopted his new, serious demeanor. Backing away, he bowed low, his tail swishing slowly from side to side as he turned his eyes to the still open door, his brown eyes seeming to yellow as his entire body shifted and glowed until… 

Until Kaden was nothing more than a massive, orange blur dashing past her into the corridors beyond the small apartment, leaving Corrin to collapse onto the floor, feeling her pulse through her own fingertips. 

Closing her eyes, she let out a silent prayer to whatever ancient Dragon was listening that someone from Hoshido would answer, hoping that she would see the white of feathers choke the sky to rain salvation upon the Nohrian army.


	5. Pride Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a dream Ryoma was my older brother last night and that my biological family had been brainwashed into taking care of me and were not actually related to me. My mother got angry with him for using our shower and he complained about how long it took his hair to dry. 
> 
> I guess that the dream was a sign that I should write his point of view chapter already.

_Control doused passion_   
_Lightning in a summer sky_   
_The embers still burn._

 

It was the last day before Takumi would take his own force across the ocean and storm Port Dia from the sea, leaving Ryoma more nervous than he would have expected to be. That had, perhaps, lead to his neuroticism in insisting upon training with Takumi every day from the moment they’d began their journey from the Spine. It was true Takumi had somewhat of an easy job, all things considered — After all, Hoshido had the superior navy and always had — but an older brother did worry… Especially when he remembered holding his younger brother in his arms as a squirming toddler with grains of rice stuck in his long hair. 

“So what’s this about going under cover?” Takumi asked, grunting as he blocked a blow from the practice blade Ryoma wielded in favor of Raijinto. 

“I’m not going under cover,” Ryoma replied, driving forward and forcing his younger brother on the defensive, “I’m simply not informing the Nohrians I’m the Hoshidan High Prince. There’s nothing really remarkable or interesting about that, you know.” 

“Yeah,” Takumi said, hissing as he stood his ground, holding his position, “yeah, right. No, Ryoma, you’re going under cover. Just because you’re going to be helping the Nohrian resistance as a Hoshidan Samurai doesn’t mean you’re not hiding who you really are.”

Ryoma chuckled, the noise drawing a bit of the fire from inside Takumi, who drove at him with a war cry. In spite of himself, Ryoma couldn’t help but think that it was a bit cute, especially because Takumi’s face was still round with his youth, though he would never let his brother know he felt that way. The indignity of it all would cause him to turn as bright red as Hinoka’s hair, and as funny as that would be, Takumi needed to believe in himself before going off to face the Nohrian forces at Dia. 

“You can hide parts of yourself without ever lying about who you are,” Ryoma said instead. “They won’t know my title, but they’ll know me. I have no plans of hiding any part of myself from them, because this is important to me, as well.” 

Takumi paused, and Ryoma joined him, watching as his brother stared up at him with confused yellow-orange eyes. 

Reaching up, Ryoma ran his hand through his hair, walking over to one of the water troughs they used for the pegasi. Cupping his hands, he leaned forward and splashed his face, running his wet fingers though the tangled mess of his hair, still feeling Takumi’s eyes on his back. He was waiting for the question, could already feel it burning in Takumi’s gaze, could well imagine what it felt like stuck in his throat.

When it finally came, Ryoma released a breath he hadn’t fully realized he’d been holding. 

“Important to you?”

“The rebels are in Cheve.”

Takumi didn’t say anything immediately, his eyes ever on Ryoma, who turned around and leaned against he edge of the trough. For a moment they simply stared at one another, Takumi’s chin pointed upwards, his eyes blazing with unspoken words, knuckles white around the practice blade still in his hand. Then, he took a step forward, set his jaw, and spoke. “That’s a bad idea, Ryoma.”

“It’s a coincidence,” Ryoma told him with a shrug. “It’s not as though I deliberately sought out the rebel group stationed in Cheve and offered to help them with the sole intent of going there.” He sighed, Takumi’s face not softening for an instant, as if he didn’t believe Ryoma. “It was a point of interest,” he admitted, “when I saw the message from their leader. I do hope that going  back there after all these years will bring me some kind of sense of peace, but…” 

Ryoma waved his hand and shrugged again, “this is about the war.” 

“No it’s not,” Takumi said, pressing, growing more bold as he walked closer to Ryoma. “I know you. I’ve watched you growing up for my entire life, Ryoma. No one took Father’s death harder than you did.” Ryoma opened his mouth to speak, but Takumi cut him off, throwing the practice blade on the ground with enough force that he was briefly worried it would crack. “I remember watching you, not much younger than I am now, grappling with losing Father because of the Nohrian Scum. I saw how much you blamed yourself for what happened to him, how you came back beat up and half-dead, covered in bandages and cradled in Mother’s arms.” 

He winced, biting back whatever retort he wanted to say, knowing that he had to be better than his instincts. Ryoma had a position to take on, a role that he must fill no matter the cost to himself, a destiny as the Dynast of Hoshido, waiting for him just beyond the end of this war. Takumi was his responsibility, his ward and charge now, and he couldn’t allow himself to be taunted and brought down to a position of weakness. 

It was his responsibility to be the bigger man here. 

So he said nothing, letting Takumi continue with his rant. 

“But what happened to Father wasn’t your fault, and what happened to Kamui wasn’t your fault, either,” Takumi said, so close now that Ryoma could feel the heat from his flushed face. “What good will going back to Cheve do you when there’s nothing left there but memories and the ghosts of your own guilt? You could just send Kagero and Saizo and they might even be better at the whole under cover thing than you’d be, seeing as that’s part of their training in the first place.” 

Ryoma waited to see if he would say anything else, crossing his arms firmly over his chest, “are you done?” 

Takumi seized his shoulders, shaking him violently, Ryoma’s hands automatically reaching out to grasp him, trying to get him to stop without hurting him. 

“Damnit, Ryoma!” Takumi shouted so loudly that his ears rang. “Stop being the family Patriarch for one moment and just be my brother!” 

His hands grasped Takumi’s arms brusingly, eyes wide as he looked down into his younger brother’s face. Ryoma swallowed, shamed by the way his hands trembled in spite of himself, his voice coming out too quiet when he did speak. “It needs to be me, Takumi. I have to be the one to finish what Father started. I don’t expect you to understand, not when you have other duties to bear on your own, but I am the eldest son, and avenging him is how I atone for not being strong enough to protect my family.” 

Takumi’s eyes went wide and he shook his head, his hold on Ryoma softening, “it was Father’s job to protect you, Ryoma, and he failed. He wasn’t perfect. If he were, we probably wouldn’t be in this war right now.” 

Opening and closing his mouth slowly, Ryoma found that he couldn’t deny what Takumi was saying no matter how badly he might want to. Father had walked into a trap and had brought his children into that trap with him, something that Ryoma himself could not wrap his mind around to this day. When he became a father he would never take his children with him on such a diplomatic mission unless their safety was completely ensured, and he would not simply die to protect them but fight so he could live and return to them in once piece. 

But he could not disparage the man who had taught him everything he knew about honor and the way of the sword, so he simply sat there, staring at Takumi until his younger brother sighed and dropped his hands. 

“Just be careful,” Takumi said, his eyes far more gentle than his voice, filled with a brotherly concern that neither of them could fully express. “I’m worried about you as much as you’re worried about me. You’re the only brother I have, after all.” 

Swallowing past the emotion stuck in his throat, Ryoma reached out and placed his hand briefly on Takumi’s shoulder, offering him a smile, “you have my word, Takumi.” 

At the end of the day, his word was all he could really give. 

* * *

The moment he saw her, tanned skin smattered with freckles, her blond hair an unruly mess, he knew that she had the blood of a warrior. 

He knew he would like her the moment she opened her mouth and spoke. 

“Nice hair,” she said, gesturing towards his head, “were you born that way, or is some kind of fancy Hoshidan style I don’t know about?” 

“No,” he replied with a quiet laugh, “that’s just me. A family trait, I’m afraid, though my brother would never admit to it. How he tries to keep it in order, but alas…” 

“Just cut it all off,” she said, then shrugged. “ That’s what I do. Unless that’s culturally insensitive. I noticed a lot of you proud Hoshidan warrior men have long hair.”

He smiled at her, shook his head, and then offered her a bow, noting the way the members of her resistance gave each other looks at the gesture. Ryoma had heard that you only bowed to royalty in Nohr, but he didn’t really believe it until she reached out and slapped him on the back, prompting him to straighten up, his eyes wide with shock as he looked into her laughing face. 

“It’s tradition,” he explained to her, “We take pride in our appearance and cleanliness in Hoshido.”

“Right, with those fancy bath houses of yours. I’ve heard stories about them,” her smile never faltered. “And what’s with the bowing? I’m no prince or princess, just a former Wyvern Knight who’s sick of the oppressive shit King Garon’s put all my people through. We’re equals, you and I.” 

He didn’t point out that she might bow to him under normal circumstances, opening and then closing his mouth before he returned her smile. “Is this Nohrian hospitality? It’s polite to bow.”

“Like I said — equals,” she explained. “I’m Scarlet, by the way, and I’m what passes for a leader here in Cheve. I guess I don’t really know your name since I was just told by a messenger that you’d be coming.” 

“Ryoma,” he said simply, seeing no reason not to use his actual name, “proud samurai of Hoshido, servant of the High Prince, sent to personally provide you whatever assistance and reinforcements you might need. We’re more than willing to help sew dissent in the ranks, especially because we also see the tyranny that King Garon represents.” 

She grinned, motioning for him to follow as she lead him through the camp on the outskirts of the city, ragged looking soldiers in second hand armor watching him as he passed. There were men and women of all sorts among their ranks, and it occurred to Ryoma how badly they really were in need of outfitting if this was all they could cobble together to form a defense, but given the unyielding and rocky soil and the ever dark sky? That wasn’t exactly surprising. 

“You see it, but I doubt you’ve ever lived it,” Scarlet told him, her face growing momentarily serious, the conviction in her eyes as bright as the Hoshidan sun, “and I’m glad for that. There’s desperation here, Ryoma, desperation like you wouldn’t believe if even your peasants have always had enough on the table to keep their bellies full and their hearts content with their simple lives.” 

She paused, looking back at him over her shoulder, “here in Nohr there’s only desperation and dreaming.” 

He could see that, but as he walked amongst them he saw other things, as well — 

Things he recognized from the meager time he’d spent with Corrin. 

There was warmth here when there was no reason to stand on ceremony. People sitting around fires sat with their legs spread, their knees touching one another, passing cups and food as they laughed loudly and without reservation. Many of them had gaunt and shadowed faces, but there was an openness there that was striking and somehow beautiful the way the rugged mountains of the Spine were beautiful, standing perpetually in a world that was both eternally dark and eternally day. 

They said the most beautiful flowers could only bloom in the wake of natural disaster, and perhaps there was some truth to that. 

Plenty brought with it the threat of stagnation, of institutions and a social order that did not allow for this sort of freedom of expression, and as much as Ryoma hated to admit it, as proud as he was of his people and his lineage…

Perhaps there was something to be learned from Nohr. 

At least, that was something he must believe if he were to ever come to understand these people and their lack of personal boundaries. 

“Come on,” Scarlet said, motioning for he and his retainers to join her in her tent, “let’s eat and I’ll tell you a bit about what the situation is like here in Nohr. I doubt you get many reports about it, honestly, and if you do, I bet they get intercepted and doctored more often than not. I have a hard time keeping anything out of the Royal Bastard’s hands, you know.” 

“Royal Bastards?” Ryoma asked as he walked into her tent, on a few steps behind her. 

“Every one of the King’s kids but the Crown Prince is a bastard. They’d be no better than the rest of us if he didn’t train them to kill their own people,” she explained. “Their mothers seduced the King during the Concubine Wars, and they were the result, and what a result they are. A complex of condescending coldness, false pity, and outright brutality, I’d say. They’re every bit as noble as their father.” 

His mother’s words from his dream suddenly occurred to him, and he hesitated, running his fingers thoughtfully over his own lips. “And what of the Crown Prince, Xander?” 

“Xander?” Scarlet asked, then sighed, rubbing the back of her head as she turned around to look at him. “Honestly, he’s not so bad. He does what he does out of a sense of obligation to Nohr and if we could kill his father, I’d want him on the throne. He’d be willing to parley with us and try to meet some of our demands to stop any more bloodshed and has gained a reputation for being more merciful than this father is. There are even whispers of him secretly defying Garon’s orders, but…” she shrugged. “Well, as long as Garon’s on the throne, he’s still our enemy.” 

Ryoma had thought as much, but it still shocked him a bit to hear that the Crown Prince had earned so much respect. When he had met him on the battlefield, the man had seemed cold until the moment Corrin had been threatened and his siblings had been insulted, attacking Ryoma with an anger behind his strikes that drove meaning into his every blow. It made sense to him in that moment by the Dark Blade Siegfried had chosen Crown Prince Xander as its master, watching him drive forward fueled by little more than a primal rage. 

So to hear that the Nohrian people liked him, that they saw something in him that Ryoma had not seen on the battlefield… 

He remembered well Corrin’s impassioned pleas that day, pleas to put aside their swords, trying to convince Ryoma that Xander was a good man, one of the greatest she had ever known. At the time he’d passed if off as manipulation or blind hero worship for one of the only people she’d ever known while in her little prison, but if even the leader of a Nohrian resistance could respect him, then perhaps Ryoma was wrong. 

There was still so much he needed to learn, her realized as he looked upon the woman in her worn red armor, a woman who met his eyes without any sort of fear or trepidation. He didn’t understand the Nohrian mindset at all, had spent years telling himself they were the monsters who had killed his father and didn’t deserve his pity, but if he could be wrong about Prince Xander, could see the good in Corrin clearly reflected in these people, what else was he wrong about?

Joining his host at the small table in her tent, Ryoma sat down, staring at his scarred fingers before looking back up into her face and swallowing his pride. 

It was a bitter taste, indeed. 

“So, Scarlet,” he began, waving his hand, “tell me about Nohr.”

And she did. 

* * *

“You’ve started to pity them.” 

Saizo’s voice came from the darkness like it always did, so familiar that it didn’t even bother Ryoma anymore. When he had been a child, the ninja had somewhat mystified him as he was sure they mystified every Hoshidan not born into the tradition, but like most things that, too, had lost its wonder once he had passed into adulthood. Now it was like anything else, a secret art, one he would never understand but one he didn’t necessarily need to, either. 

Raising his cup to his lips, Ryoma took a drink and then sighed. “Do you need to sound so disappointed in me, Saizo? Just because you have a heart of stone doesn’t mean I do, and they are pitiable. Isn’t that right, Kagero?” 

“Indeed it is, milord Ryoma,” said the quiet, feminine voice of his long-time retainer. “I feel quite bad for them. These people are starving and in desperate need of better leadership. Seeing us here has given them hope.” 

“They are our enemy,” Saizo replied. “Helping them makes strategic sense, but they would turn on us in a moment if it meant protecting themselves from the threat of their own rulers.”

He could feel the tension between the two of them mounting and ran his hand over his face. 

Things between them always felt like a summer day on the verge of a storm when before they had worked so well together. Not that he was really surprised, of course, not when the two of them had once been intimate and had broken apart because of their differences in approach to the world around them. He only wished that he didn’t have to deal with the headache, but they were both such loyal retainers and so excellent at their jobs, had been with him for so long, that he couldn’t bring himself to replace either of them. 

Besides, Saizo would be a nightmare to a new retainer and his position almost certainly meant he was the one Ryoma would keep. 

“That remains to be seen,” Ryoma said quietly, sorely wishing for rice this morning, hoping that the supplies he’d requested would be here soon. 

He would feed Scarlet’s army, even if he had to feed them a diet consisting entirely of smoked fish and radishes and they complained the entire time. 

Sighing, he leaned back and looked at the ceiling of his tent. Rumors had been circulating for some time about the Nohrian Army moving towards Cheve. There had even been rumors that Princess Camilla was leading them, and after spending awhile amongst the troops here talking to them without any sort of pretense, living and working as their equal in every way, he had gathered that her arrival would be a very bad thing indeed. She was apparently a force to be reckoned with, the most brutal of her siblings, the one most likely to follow Garon’s orders to perfection, and if she came she would bring death for even the most lowly citizens of Cheve with her. 

“So you mean to say you trust them?” Saizo asked, emerging from the darkness, his red hair somehow stark in the shadows. 

“Yes,” Ryoma said, looking towards the tent flap, searching for shadows just beyond the cloth, though it was always difficult to tell these kinds of things in the perpetual Nohrian darkness. “I trust them, Saizo. Scarlet and her people have proven to be excellent warriors, good sports, and to care about the fate of their country for reasons that have to do with the suffering of the people rather than for the sake of their own power.” 

He’d worked shoulder to shoulder with Scarlet for the last week and a half, day in and day out, drilling her troops on proper combat techniques and teaching them long-held Hoshdian secrets to being able to deal with Nohrian mounted troops. After all, her little army was hardly a cavalry of the likes of which he had seen during the Battle at the Spine, their horses magnificent beasts of the highest bearing, bred for war for generations… Not too dissimilar from the Nohrian Royal Line, he supposed. From everything he’d heard, they were very selective about their marriages until King Garon had come along and married a peasant born woman named Katerina who had fought her way through the military ranks to become one of the most respected Paladins of the age. 

Apparently, her son took after her. 

“Trusting Nohrians is what killed Dynast Sumeragi and my father, milord,” Saizo said coolly, his words sending shocks down Ryoma’s spine… As if he were holding Raijinto in his hand at that very moment. 

He could hear Kagero’s anger in the silence that followed those words as he placed his hands in his lap and attempted to gain control of himself. The words felt like a stab to the gut, though he wasn’t really surprised that Saizo had said them, his rage as explosive as his personality could be and always as harsh. If he disapproved of something Ryoma was doing, he would let him know, no matter how “proper” it might or might not be. 

Ryoma had always given him leave to do so in private, but right now?

Right now, he was regretting it. 

“These people aren’t King Garon,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “They’re not tyrants in charge of a country, they’re peasants and soldiers who are starving because there’s not enough food to feed them in all of Nohr. I’m not turning against Hoshido by helping them, they’re risking their lives by fighting a man who doesn’t care if he crushes them all and leaves them as nothing but charred corpses lying in their wheat fields to be picked over by carrion birds.” 

Turning back to his bowl, he stared at the meager food there, his brows furrowing deeply, fighting back the urge to bite that he was not his father. 

Takumi’s words somehow rang in his mind and weighed heavily on his heart. 

Taking a breath, he raised his head, staring into Saizo’s war-scarred face. Setting his jaw, he summoned every bit of resolve he had ever seen his father wear and turned his expression stern. “You are dismissed for now,” he said, eyes flickering to Kagero, “the both of you. I need to prepare for the day and I would like to do so in peace. I need time to think.”

There was no argument, though Saizo’s eyes lingered on him for a moment before he vanished into the darkness. 

Wondering how far away they were, Ryoma sat for a moment longer, simply staring into the darkness. His throat was tight with all the things he wouldn’t allow himself to feel, his mind wandering the streets of

Cheve as they had been over a decade ago, leaving him feeling as though he had aged a century in that time. He was not yet that old, none of his siblings were, and yet he felt as though they had all lived an immeasurable amount of time in the years since Father’s murder. 

Would he feel this way a decade after Mother’s death, or would they finally know peace?

Surely this war could not last forever. 

Setting his bowl aside, Ryoma stood, flexing his scarred hand as he looked at Raijinto, tucked into its sheath. 

He had long ago learned the prince of arrogance, or so he had thought. 

He only prayed that he wasn’t wrong and that it had been worth it to humble himself before the Nohrian resistance the way he had because like it or not, Takumi was right. Ryoma had just as much at stake in this war personally as Scarlet did, as Corrin did, as Prince Xander of Nohr did, and what happened here might determine whether he finally laid his ghosts to rest or if they would haunt him for the rest of his days, even onto the grave.


End file.
